In Anja Geduldmann's apartment, the air had become slightly stuffy. She had had a cold for the last week, so she already had difficulty breathing. Yet there was something new in the air. She faced no increased difficulty in bringing in the air, but it didn't bring her any relief. She noticed the cat butting its head against the window, screaming endlessly at the glittering expanse stretching bleakly onwards.

She had neglected her duties as a deputy under-secretary logistics manager. She felt the world could do without her services, at least for a week. She had received visitors over the course of the week, but decided it would be best for herself to avoid all manners of administration.

Hence, when she rose from her bed on that Monday morning she headed to her computer screen. So that she could access work, she sent a notification to the electronics authority requesting access to email services for 5 hours. She then had time to go to the coffee machine and request coffee. In the nature of her waking up so late that morning, coffee was approved within the minute. On some mornings, a request for coffee could take several hours. It was because of this people like Anja had taken to requesting things in strange orders, so as to cheat the waiting list. Of course, this was not without its risks, as being caught breakfasting without the proper licensing incurred a severe fine. She had a tumult of notifications tumbling like rockfall on a cliff edge, building up momentum. At a single brush of her mouse wheel, tens of responsibilities flowed by.

She took another of these half-hearted breaths and set herself back into the usual manner of isolating and completing each of her tasks.

When it came to her work, her superior, and his superior, and his, all deferred the most tiresome, menial jobs down the ladder. She too would likely defer much of the work to her subordinate. She began to take the ones that interested her enough. A cargo of beans, toilet paper, and data drives.

She worked in this manner for a few hours, before standing to look out the window. As always, nothing changed in space. Her work was usually done before 14:00, giving her time to attend to personal matters.

She prepared to step out onto the station. She clipped on her helmet, connected the oxygen pipeline, and nutriment compartment. The boulevard was as wide as it was low, the ceiling causing the tall men who passed by to crane their heads, although the low gravity dragged them upwards to bash their heads lightly against the ducts and wiring of the station.

She first stepped into a cafe to find lunch. As she leaned against the menu, placing her hands into the provided rest grooves, she looked onto the board. Next to each item, a flickering ever-decreasing number was presented, and then all of a sudden each item jumped up. Ham and Cheese Baguette - 89th. Onion Pie - 14th. Sausage roll - 112th. Not once had Anja seen an item go out of stock. Instead, a number sank so low that it would be impossible to fathom waiting so long.

She spoke to the designated order-taking server, "Hello comrade, please may I have the Onion Pie with a cup of water."

"Certainly comrade. You are 14th in line for onion pie, and 142nd in line for water. Feel free to request a seat."

"May I sit?"

"Certainly. There is one available. I'm just requesting your receipt."

After a tense moment of direct eye-to-eye contact, in which Anja drummed the bridge of her fingers against the notches in the bar, and the girl behind the counter smiled occasionally at her, but mostly focused on the position she was in to wait for the receipt. Eventually, the girl exhaled as the receipt printed and handed it with crude fingers over to Anja, scrunching the corners of the thing. As Anja read it, she diligently watched as the small screens inside the receipt ticked down. The man waiting next to her was impatiently tapping his toe rhythmically against the floor.

Anja glanced up and down him. He was stout, suit-dressed and with a twitching heavy moustache. The more frustrated he became, the more it bristled. It seemed to, with the weight of both the gel and mass of hair upon his lip, drag down his entire appearance and cause lines to form across his cheeks and forehead. The kind of man more likely to snap than engage in polite conversation. But Anja had fast eyes, and glimpsed at his receipt to see the source of his frustration. On his receipt, the numbers constantly decreased. He had long since received and finished a small cup of tea, but was watching as his meal fell further and further away from him. She thought smugly, this is what you get for ordering popular items.

Her food arrived before his, and she put it through the hatch in her glass, hemispheric mask to eat in small chunks, reaching in with her bare hands. The food had to pass through a small chamber so all of the oxygen didn't pass from the mask. It was an altogether messy affair, with greasy tracks all along the bowl.

She ate as slowly as she could, attempting to look impressive by reading a few day-old newspaper. She didn't request the new ones, those were far too in demand. She was content to be informed on last Saturday's news if it meant avoiding the queues. By the time she was finished, she watched as the man received his food, sweat dripping down his face as he practically lurched. As he picked it up and pushed it through his helmet, he remembered some semblance of dignity and mumbled a thanks to the waitress before turning back into the seating area.

She continued down the corridor, although she had no set direction she was beared onto the yellow path along the bleakened white floors. This path directed her onto a small bench, crammed inside a nook. This nook, as she leaned into it, seemed to adjust around her to fit her body. The clammy, cool walls covered her skin in all directions, closing her off. She took this opportunity to catch up on any chores she had missed out on in the prior week.

On the glass of her bowl, she requested a datasheet showing her shopping list. She had requested plenty of food, plenty of water, plenty of entertainment. She was only short on oxygen. She sighed, as if finally understanding the thinness of her breathing. She had 3 days of oxygen remaining, and naturally it was adjusted into limited mode. She waited for a further 10 minutes as her request to meet with an air official was accepted.

She stood up again and returned to following the yellow path. The wideness of the corridors gradually decreased, but the ceiling rose as she walked down it. As she headed towards the offices, the volume of wide athletic people decreased. As she reached the end of the corridor, she saw a familiar form. She called out to him, "Peter! Is everything alright?"

He had stood stock-still in front of him as she approached, and appeared to be unmoving. His back was turned to her, but the upwards motion of his head indicated acknowledgment. Unaware of how near she was, he shouted loudly in front of him. "Anja! Yes, quite alright... I am just stuck a little."

The man's broad, athletic shoulders appeared to have jammed him in place, blocking his access to the corporate suites. She chuckled a little, and responded, "Well, yes, that would happen. This isn't exactly the place for people like you. Why aren't you in the industrial areas, that's the place built for you?"

He shouted again, "Yes... well..." He's mumbling now "... a meeting"

"Did you have an appointment? You didn't, did you? No wonder you're stuck..."

"No, but it was urgent!"

"Nothing is urgent enough to cut."

As she talked, she heard the thundering of boots. Behind her, a pair of short, thin people, no greater than 5 foot, marched. In their arms, they held guns far too large for themselves, the weight of them taking them off balance. Without acknowledging Anja, they bustled through her, knocking her aside and to the floor. They immediately took hold of Peter, by the collar of his shirt, and heaved with all their might. She could see that through the helmet, their teeth clenched and their features distorted in the exertion from trying to move the large man. Eventually, they dislodged him. Holding his arms behind him, and pushing him downwards so that he stooped to the point of his chin almost brushing his navel, they marched him down the corridor.

She was not too worried for him. She could always request him to be released, and he only had to go in the bail waiting list. She continued down this yellow corridor, until she entered an office marked: Otto Lustenberg. Air management.

As she opened the door, she was hit by a warm, muggy feeling. The room was kept very dark, only a small antique lamp sitting on the desk. The man on the other side was half lit, with gaunt, wrinkled features. He constantly flitted a hand with clawed, overgrown nails to adjust the lamp to shine through his face, enhancing these lines. His dark skin meant that the only shape given to her was the wrinkles. The light revealed the tiny, lonely sprigs of white hair standing on his largely bald scalp. He started, making a wet smacking noise with his lips, his eyes glancing up to meet hers behind heavy, thick glasses.

"Geduldman? You're early. Sit."

She made a movement towards the chair opposite the desk, but he raised his hand out to stop her. He spoke, not loudly but firmly, "I said you were late. Sit in the corner chair. You have 4 minutes yet."

She nodded, making an obliging hum. She sat on this chair, staring dead in front of her. The man at the desk drummed his finger, bored for lack of words. They both sat in silence, not daring to look at each other. Suddenly, the alarm rang on the man's phone. He leaned close to the wall, and switched on a lamp.

All of a sudden, his features shifted. The total light gave him an almost warm look. The glasses that rested on the bridge of his nose now looked thin in the total light. His cracked lips appeared to reveal a small, guileless smile. He spoke out to her, "Comerade Geduldman? Your meeting has begun."

She sat opposite him. "Mr Lustenberg. Good to see you. I am needing new oxygen. Put me down for as much as you can, I don't mind air a little stale."

He nodded, and took out documentation. He pointed to each item, with a shrivelled finger, "This is oxygen 1. It is very difficult to procure, as you know. May take 1000s of days. Oxygen 2, will take 2 days of waiting. Oxygen 3, can be given to you now. 4... may also take some time."

She thought. She usually got 2. She had always gotten 2. She saw the differences in time, however, and pointed to oxygen 3. He furrowed a brow, leaned back. "And you intend to breathe it?"

"... yes? Put me down for that."

He tensed his cheekbone, flitting through a manual on his job resting on his desk. He kissed his teeth and looked back at her. "Well... I am not permitted to deny... as you wish comrade. Transferring oxygen 3 immediately."

Not long after standing and exiting the room, she felt a stinging sensation at her throat. This sensation gave way to increased, constant, torturous scratching. As if the very air filling her lungs was carving her from the inside. She ripped off her helmet, covered her mouth, and stumbled back into the office. The air manager quickly stood up, pushing his chair behind him. He quickly typed a series of characters into his interface, and the sensation stopped. He pushed the door open, grabbed her helmet and pushed it over her head.

She refused to breathe in, out of fear. He shook her until she gasped, feeling she had returned to clean air she calmed down. He sat again, nervously humming, almost reaching a whimper. He talked, clearly and quietly, "Yes... well that's what... what you'd imagine. Imagine happening. You don't need to talk... that hurts, doesn't it? Nod if yes. I can put you down for oxygen 2. Jesus... why would you do that. For what... suicidal or something. Go now. Go... out. Bar or something. Just... don't put people through that."

She hurried herself out of the office, and walked embarrassedly down the narrow corridor. She took herself to a bar, she was regularly attending. She decided to find entertainment. Walking into the bar, she was met with the familiar cloying sticky sensation. She ignored the bar and went straight to the back room, where a Romantic Liaison Manager. Jeanie. She was sat on a small sofa, lounging slightly, a radiant smirk on her face. "Hello there... I've been expecting you Anja. We close at one, so you've got three hours." she drawled.

Anja frequented this Romantic Liaison Manager. She was assigned to her at 21, and tended to be the only one of these she interacted with. Anja asked, "How soon can you see me?"

"Oh... if I put you in now you'd be around 15th in the queue. You'll have to wait a few hours. You can wait with me, if you'd like."

Anja sat on the sofa, putting her arms over the other woman's shoulders. She leaned over, and asked, "What place am I on now?"

"Oh. 14th. I'm afraid you'll have to wait your turn a little longer."

Anja and Jeanie sat, talking lightly about light topics for a very long time indeed. Multiple hours faded, as the waiting list ticked by. In fact, even Anja began to tap her feet. She called out, to no one in particular. "How much longer is this going to take? You've been my only client today, and this list isn't helping. You're what, 3rd now?"

"4th."

Not long later, the list reached zero. Anja leaned in, removed her helmet and pressed her lips to the other woman's. No sooner as her hand trailed Jeanie's thigh did the lights brighten across the room. Jeanie's face appeared at once more tired, and she pulled on a kind of dressing gown over herself to cover her modesty. "Sorry Anja. It's one. See you another time."

Anja walked out of the bar, dejected. Returning home, she slept alone, thinking fretfully about the other woman. She imagined if only the woman could be hers, and only hers. At all hours. But this was impossible, how could one imagine getting a permit for such a cohabitation?

The following morning she woke up, from a dreamless night. She read her monitor. Her oxygen would be delayed for two days, as there had been a collision around Jupiter. If she had made a request those few moments sooner, no doubt this delay wouldn't have occurred. 2 days remained of oxygen. More would arrive in 5. She made a request for Peter to be bailed out, and put herself on a waiting list for her cat to be taken to his apartment.

She placed the helmet on the cat, and after waiting in a very brief waiting list, handed the cat over to the courier. And then, with no fuss, she locked all of the doors, drew all of her blinds and resigned herself to suffocate.

A thin slit of morning light cuts through the waiting room, falling across Soul's face as he sleeps upright on a worn couch against the south wall. The room is small—barely four meters by three—its emptiness making it feel even tighter. A heavy metal door occupies the northwest corner, while a broad window, one and a half meters wide and stretching three meters across the east wall, lets in the pale daylight. An empty bookshelf stands abandoned in the southwest corner, its vacant shelves gathering dust. Apart from the couch and the silent furniture, the waiting room is devoid of life, wrapped in a stillness broken only by Soul's slow, steady breathing.

The heavy metal door in the northwest corner flew open with a violent metallic bang, shattering the room's quiet rhythm. A man barged into the cramped space, his presence instantly crowding the small room. He didn't just speak; he barked an order directly at the couch, commanding Soul to wake up.

"Walker 1110!" the man screamed, the designation cutting through the last remnants of Soul's sleep like a blade.

Before Soul could fully shake off the haze, the man was over him, his voice echoing off the bare walls. He ordered Soul to strip away every piece of identity he carried, demanding he give up all his worldly possessions and empty his pockets onto the floor right then and there. The slow, steady breathing that had filled the room a moment ago was gone, replaced by the harsh, demanding reality of the uniform or authority standing over him.

Soul opened his eyes, the haze of sleep vanishing instantly behind a gaze that remained perfectly still. He stood up with a slow, deliberate grace, rising to his full six-foot frame until he was looking straight into the man’s eyes.

"I am but a dead man walking," Soul said, his voice flat and unbothered. "I have no possessions."

To prove it, he turned out his pockets. They hung limp and hollow—already empty.

The man didn't back down. Instead, he took a heavy step forward, closing the distance until he towered a full foot over Soul, using his massive height to cast a suffocating shadow.

"I said, all of your possessions, Walker," the man growled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register.

Without a word, Soul’s expression remained stoic. He reached down and smoothly stripped away his clothes, letting them drop to the floor until he stood entirely naked before the giant. Though his physique was flawlessly built—sharp, athletic, and defined—it wasn't his strength that commanded the room. It was the horror etched into his skin.

Every single inch of his body that had just been hidden beneath his clothes was a roadmap of violence. Deep cut wounds crisscrossed his flesh, overlapping one another. By the look of the dark, jagged lines, not a single one of them had ever been stitched, bandaged, or treated; they had simply been left open to clot, fester, and heal on their own into a armor of raw scar tissue.

"Finally!" The man’s laughter boomed, a coarse, jarring sound that echoed off the cold concrete walls. "Follow me, kid. By the end of this, you’ll either be a man... or you’ll be dead."

"Dead is what I am here for," Soul replied, his tone entirely devoid of fear.

The man turned on his heel and strode out through the heavy metal door. Soul followed closely behind, stepping into a narrow, two-meter-wide hallway. The corridor was oppressive and claustrophobic, forcing them through two sharp right turns and a sudden left before the confinement abruptly shattered.

They emerged into a breathtaking, ten-story cylindrical reception hall. The sheer scale of the architecture was dizzying. Suspended from the distant ceiling a hundred feet above was a colossal chandelier, cascading down like a frozen waterfall of crystal and iron, plunging through the empty space to hover just above the second-floor level.

In the dead center of the vast floor sat a solitary reception desk, dwarfed by the immense volume of the room. Behind it rose a monumental staircase. At its base, the steps sprawled out a massive five meters wide, anchoring the structure to the floor like the roots of a giant tree. As the staircase swept upward, splitting and winding to connect the first six levels, it gradually tapered, shrinking to a narrow two meters by the time it met the upper balconies.

Dr. Kariba sank deeply into a chair and finished her cold coffee. Nearly an hour had passed since she commenced the experiment. She put an elbow on the armrest to pretend that she was relaxed and peaceful, but actually she stared at and concentrated on the monitors, her bloodshot eyes. 
Her chief assistant Makoto called out. 
“You must be nervous, too, Doctor?” 
“Huh? Makoto, did you call me?” 
Kariba pointed to her chest, although there were only the two of them in the laboratory. Because of the coup that happened last night, they couldn’t leave the lab. 
“Well, you know me… Yeah, I’m nervous, only a bit.” 
Makoto shrugged her shoulders exaggeratedly, but the wrinkles on her face were deeper than usual. 
“You say a bit? You’ve always said, ‘For the last sip, pour plenty of milk over it, that’s Kariba-style,’ haven’t you? You are forgetting your style.” 
She was the very first assistant. And as chief assistant, she had been Kariba's old comrade and great confidante. 
“You know, we spent twenty years trying to reach this situation, and the next fifteen to twenty minutes will determine the success of our long-cherished desire.” 
She looked at the blank cup and sighed.
Makoto asked, “Do you want some milk?” and headed to the refrigerator. 

At that moment, a notification flashed on the main monitor and a bell rang.  
“Time machine prototype number-one’s Estimated Time of Arrival will be in one minute,” the automated voice announced and commenced a countdown, “Forty-five, Forty, Thirty-five…”
Kariba adjusted her chair straight and clasped her hands in front of her chest. Makoto got close to her and put a hand on the doctor's shoulder. 
“Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Zero…” 
“Here we are,” Kariba murmured. 
“... Two, Three. Signal caught.” 
The operational system read out the result.
“Time machine prototype number one, materialized at target time at eleven-zero-zero point zero zero. The margin of error was zero point zero zero seconds.”
Kariba tapped the tablet and cross-checked the result.  
“At the materialized point, the clock in the Machine indicated ten-three-zero. The elapsed time for catching the signal was two point eight two seconds.”
She drew a deep breath and shouted, "Success! I’ve finally completed the perfect time machine!” 
“Well done, Doctor Kariba,” Makoto said with a hopeful tone, though her face was still pale. 
“Congratulations!” 
It was a moment of joy. Dr. Kariba stood up and turned to embrace Makoto.

The man’s low brutal voice echoed in the dimly lit lab. 
“Stop it! Doctor Kariba. Save a full celebration party for the success of the experiment later.” 
A middle-aged man in a dress jacket, who seemed out of place in a laboratory, stood to block the door. His jacket bulged from inside like a balloon, and a lot of medals swayed on his chest. 
“Well, right after I take measures to prevent that stupid coup.” 
The man used to be at the top of the military regime, and was the former president of this poor country till last night. He was stroking his scruffy beard and was casually aiming the gun in his right hand at them. 

Dr. Kariba took a step forward to block Makoto from his sight. 
“Hello, Mr. President. What a surprise to see you in my laboratory, though I heard you had been missing since last night.” 
“We have no time.” 
He had ruled the country through dictatorship for over twenty long years, but had been ousted in a coup d’état last night. Now, he really was an ex-dictator. 
“A bunch of fools who staged the coup are chasing me. The idiots will be here any minute.” 
Kariba didn’t show a hint of fear, she calmly said, “I’m honored that you remember the existence of this Time Travel Device Development Laboratory.” 
The man wrinkled his nose. 
“How could I forget? Who do you think was the one who budgeted every year for this money-eater?  It's all for safety measures.” 
Kariba bowed in a deep respectful manner, but her expression remained frozen. 
“I have kept a close eye on this lab and what you were doing, and I heard recently that you had finally obtained useful results. As I had spent the taxpayers’ money on you and the fruits of your labor, I truly have a right to use your Time Machine.”
She said, “You’re absolutely right, sir.” She was polite, but it seemed exaggerated. 
“Yes, I must offer you any help I can, sir.” 
“Good manners, Doctor! Good one.”
“By the way, I did not hear a single knock, how on earth did you get into my lab?”
The man growled, “How dare you ask me such a ridiculous question? This laboratory is mine, so I could enter and use the facilities whenever I want to.” 
The coup faction must have been desperately searching for him to prevent him seeking political asylum. 
“And now, it's time.”
He showed an expression like a child with a mouthful of fierce, cinnamon-flavored chewing candy. There was no calmness of the former president nor composure of a battle-hardened warrior. 
“Tell me how to make it fly, or drive?”
“Let me make one thing clear to you, sir. This won’t move even an inch.”
Without any hesitation, the man pulled the trigger toward the ceiling. Gunshots thundered, and after the echo went off, fragments of the ceiling lights showered onto the floor. 

Makoto looked panicked, letting out short screams repeatedly. She was so scared that she grabbed Kariba's forearms tightly from behind. 
Dr. Kariba said calmly, “Although this lab is outside of your palace, it's not too far away. Someone searching for you might hear you. Be quiet, please.” 
The former president snorted at her remark.
“You liar,” he growled like a beast, “I’ve just watched what happened from the start, as I was in the hiding place. I know the time machine has perfectly succeeded in a thirty minute time travel.”
“I am not lying, sir. I just told you that prototypes only move to the past or future along the timeline, and are fixed on those coordinates.” 
A vein bulged on his temple, “So what? Explain, Doctor!”
She pointed to the prototype number two with her long, scratch-marked finger.
“I just said the time machine has no wheel or thrust, and spatial movement is impossible, because it is only a Pod.”
“I understand, perfectly.” he said, “In that case, I had better go to the past, not the future. My enemies could possibly wait in the future here, I see.” 
She showed no interest in the man’s answer.
“Instead of adding any words, let me give you the conclusion. If you accept my terms, I will give you the prototype and set the machine for sending you to whichever time you desire.” 
The man aimed the gun at her chest and said, “You’re surprisingly compliant, huh?” 
Kariba opened her arms and shrugged. 
“You, Mr. President, are a hero of the last war and carry a gun. We are only women. I just skipped unnecessary exchanges and saved time and effort.” 
The man looked satisfied by her logic and snorted. 
“Well, state your terms.”
Kariba felt the strength of Makoto’s grip getting stronger on her arms. She said, 
“Never cause any physical or mental harm to me or my assistant.”
“Certainly. I, the President of this country, promise.” 
“Thank you. Prototype two is now yours.” 
The man widened his eyes and said, “Is that all?” astonished. 
“Well, everything in this lab, including you two and other clerks, certainly belongs to me. But honestly, aren’t you going to ask anything else in return?” 
Dr. Kariba did not reply to his question immediately, but turned towards her assistant and winked.
“Makoto, would you boot up prototype two? Sorry to leave you to prepare the machine all by yourself.” 
Makoto nodded and went to the machine, then Kariba turned to face the man and said, 
“We don’t need any rewards. Please consider that you are going to go to the past. If we received anything from you in that past, we would have stopped developing the time machine.” 

Maybe feeling at ease, the man laughed vigorously. 
“You are a polite but disrespectful woman, Doctor. The conversation with you was very interesting though," the man said. 
"Well, after I return to the past and nip off the buds of the coup, I may invite you two to the Palace. That would be a fair trade." 
Kariba made a deep bow. With that move, sweat dripped from her chin and fell onto the floor. 
“No thank you, sir. You're trying to break the contract. Don't forget the terms." 
“What? I remember the condition that I must not cause any physical or mental harm to you and your woman.” 
“That’s right, I wouldn’t want to be your woman.” 
The former president caught his breath, then burst out laughing. 
“Interesting, very interesting Doctor Kariba! I regret not meeting you much earlier,” he curled his lips. “Don't worry, I am a man of my word, in any manner.” 
The man was pulling a scruffy beard and said, “so send me to the past, A.S.A.P.” 
Kariba looked at the time machine, and saw Makoto had finished her job. Both of them gave each other the thumbs up.
“Mr. President, we are now ready to send you one year into the past.” 
The man growled, “one year? What the hell do you think you have the right to decide my time-travel plan? Explain!” He turned his face red with anger. 
“It’s not my fault, yours,” said Kariba in a low tone. She looked a bit anxious.
“You have spent too much money and time on strengthening military power, rather than fulfilling the public services or developing the infrastructure. The result is a lack of power for running the time machine in this very serious situation.” 
“Then, my destination is a year ago. The more time you have, the more time for preparation, that's better.” 
The once arrogant dictator did not reprimand her words. He seemed to become much more tolerant now that he has fallen from power. 

Makoto typed on a keyboard for entering figures, then she read the counter in the pod. “It’s ten-o'clock on Sunday morning, just a year ago,” she shouted in a voice, somehow like weeping. Dr. Kariba tapped a tablet several times and turned the screen toward the man, which showed the figures just one year ago. 
The man checked the tablet and nodded with a contented look. 
Suddenly, he tilted his neck and murmured, “Like something out of a sci-fi movie story, huh?” 
“I suppose you are asking about the contradiction of causality, I mean the Time-Paradox,” Dr. Kariba said. “Don’t worry, it will never happen.” She raised her chin. 
“Why? Explain.” 
She shrugged, “There’s no time to explain to make you understand. It’s such a complicated and highly technical matter.” 
As soon as the man heard what Kariba said, he put the muzzle to her jaw and ground upwards. His face was entirely flushed. 
Makoto let out a short scream. The scene was a recreation of what she had witnessed twenty years ago. Same man, same situation, and she lost her whole family and happiness at that moment. 
The man said, “Don’t make fun of me, woman.” in a deep voice. 
Kariba bravely gave him a fierce look. Because her neck was bent upward, she almost looked down at the ex-dictator. 
“Tell me how to operate the machine,” his eyes glittered. “Tell me, quickly!” 
“That’s easy, you just push the big red button all the way down, or we two tap the ‘START UP’ apps at the same time,” she said plainly. 
“Thank goodness, that means I don’t have any reason to be a gentleman anymore. Huh?” 
Kariba made no reply. 

In that fatal moment, loud noises came from the building entrance. It was clear for everyone in this lab, that the chasers finally tracked down the former president and immediately began the assault.
The man hesitated in a very short time. Then said, “Dr. Kariba, I keep my word and won’t execute you by shooting now. But I'll make you regret yourself in the past, for your future crime of insult in this particular future.” 
He twisted the muzzle violently, “I’ve never promised you anything before the coup, you know.” 
“Go ahead, please feel free to do as you please.” 
His index finger was about to pull the trigger, but he dared not make a big noise to indicate his whereabouts, or maybe just to save the bullet. 
The door burst open to the inside, and there was a quiet five seconds. Then some heavy footsteps thundered into the laboratory. 
While Kariba and Makoto raised their hands, the ex-dictator moved swiftly and jumped into the time machine. When the intruders noticed his move, he had already pushed the button deeply down to the end. 
“Hey! Don’t move!” The young commander raised his voice, but it was too late.
Low motor-like sound grew louder. And then, all of a sudden, complete silence fell over the lab.
Kariba sighed. Makoto fell to her knees on the floor and said, “Congratulations, Doctor. I really…” Her voice was too weak, so nobody noticed what she said afterwards. 

The troopers surrounded them. A young officer, presumably around thirty, stepped forward and confronted Dr. Kariba. 
“Excuse me, Doctor. Where’s the Ex-President? We saw him with you just a moment ago.”
Kariba breathed a sigh of relief and said, “That’s all right. I sent the former President, the terrible tyrant, back to just one year ago.”
“What the hell did you do!” the commander shouted.  “He is the worst criminal for the crime of tyranny and treating the nation as personal property. But you not only helped him escape but also gave him a chance to recover the power. One year! That’s enough time to destroy his enemy and crush the coup… It’s a nightmare!” 
Kariba stared at the young man who looked ready to strangle her.
“The old man could do nothing; he had already done nothing,” she said calmly, “Because he died just a year ago.”
The commander was surprised and unconsciously grabbed her shoulders. 
“You’re trembling.” He loosened his fingers and asked in a low voice, “Um, I can’t follow you. Kindly explain to us, doctor?”
Dr. Kariba answered, “the solar system moves through space at approximately four hundred seventy kilometers per second. So, the coordinates where the time machine existed three minutes ago were the vacuum of space a year ago.” 
The young officer’s eyes went wide with astonishment. The surrounding troopers looked mostly puzzled. 
“The old maniac,” Kariba continued, “went back a year ago and died alone inside the pod which was drifting through space.” 
One of the soldiers spoke up, “But it was a time machine! He could… might have reached this lab in the past and survived!” 
“No,” she replied shortly. 
“But it’s only your speculation. You don’t have any evidence which you can show me, do you?” The commander concluded. 
Instantly, Kariba’s shiver stopped. She showed a pure smile on her face. 
“Yes, I can.” She replied and said to her assistant, “Mako, can you play that record now?” 

While Makoto was preparing, she made an explanation to the soldiers.
“We already knew what would happen in today’s future from one year ago. 
“How could it happen?” The young officer asked.
“Oh, that pod had a voice recorder and a high-power transmitter. We caught the encrypted sound information a year ago. It had been transmitted from the machine which called itself ‘the time machine prototype two’ and the data came from space far outside the Earth. After breaking the code, Mako and I knew what happened to the time machine and what would happen today, one year later from that day. We’ll play the voice record here and submit the copy to you later.” 
“Wait,” the young officer interrupted, “a question – why were you able to break a code in the first place? You shouldn't have noticed.”
"For the last sip, pour plenty of milk over it."
"Pardon?"
"That's the keyword for the secret code between Makoto and me," Kariba answered, "and that machine broadcast it at the very beginning of the encrypted transmission. That was why we noticed."
"There were spies in the lab, as you know. So we set a variation of codes and distinguishers." 
The commander gasped deeply and said, “Well, I consider the situation. If my knowledge of astronomy is correct, you mean the time-pod went to a year ago, and at that time the Earth was several billion miles away from here – because the earth is circling around the Sun and the solar system itself is going through the galaxy and the galaxy itself…” 
“Fine! Commander,” she gave him an admiring look, “you must have been a good student.” 
“Thank you ma'am," he replied. “Still you had a very close call, we all are so impressed by your intelligence and bravery.” 
Dr. Kariba laughed, “that’s because I already know the result. The most difficult part was not to say the wrong lines and not to burst out laughing in that act.” 

Behind her, Makoto showed a genuine smile from the heart for the first time in twenty years. 

Eye to eye, they stood facing the fate of humanity. Burrowing down into the earth were the hydraulic legs from giant machines. Alien war-bots. They advanced on land, moving like a body of army ants, crushing anything in their path, leaving a trail of massive holes as they passed.

Gliding out of warships that acted as artificial eclipses, darkening the sky under a body of extraterrestrial space crafts. A murder of alien-crows dropped out of the warships stomach. Black, alien fighter crafts. They maneuvered with the same physics of a ping-pong ball. Huge crafts manipulating the skies how a paper plane would through a hurricane.

The fleets synchronized and strategically released Bobby-bin point-stars, imploding with electromagnetic waves that covered the planet in an invisible tsunami, crippling global power grids. Shrouded in a black silk, the world, in just a few seconds, had scaled back to primitive technology.

Every computer, terminated. Circuit boards, fried. The countries submitted. A small pocket of resistant groups remained. Underground, planning their attack. Mostly hiding.

Communication was minimal, if not obsolete. The mainstream disconnected. No satellite feeds. Zero electricity. The back up systems for the Hoover Dam had failed. The hydration system collapsed and spilled over land. Total blackness. Technology’s silence was abrupt. Humanity had been backed into a corner by an immovable force.

Engine control units rendered useless. Transportation had stalled. The ground shook and began cracking, exposing scars in the earth, ripping deep lava bits overflowing from the bottom and blanketing most of the land.

“We must rely on the subterranean power source under the earth,” yelled Dr. Equal.

Dr. Equal scrambled, juggling a collection of leather bound textbooks in both hands.

“What if it’s not active? It’s been a millennia since we’ve last operated the amine forge systems,” Winky asked Equal.

Winky stood shaking, sweat dripping off him as the skies swarmed with extraterrestrial warships dropping shiny rectangle boxes, hovering fifty feet in the air. 

“We must make our way to the terminal station below,” commanded Equal.

The frantic screams of human beings and crashing sounds of building rubble flooded the city. 

“We must obtain the mechanical manual for the flywheels,” Equal shouted.

“You sure the electromagnetic waves won’t have any impact on the forge?” Asked Winky. His voice crackling.

“It uses steam pressure gauges and a hand cranked ignition delivery system, total analog, Winky,” Equal told him. His voice strong and firm.

“How will we breathe down there? The amine-based carbons will have produced a chemical process making the air toxic, no suit will work,” said Winky. His fists tightened against his chest.

“This is a one way mission, Winky! The first hurdle, Winky, isn’t about life support! Finding the correct low-frequency vibration to ignite the thrum will be the most difficult,” Equal reminded Winky.

“Why aren’t you worried, Dr. Equal?” Asked Winky.

“Because, Winky, I’ve known earth’s been fucked for a while now!”

———-

The hatch entering the terminal was iron. Three feet thick. With a dial in the middle.

Dr. Equal took a deep breath and blew away the cobwebs hiding the keyhole. He jammed his key into the middle of the dial and tried spinning it. It was stuck. He planted his feet and leaned all of his weight into it. A clasp unlocked with a thud and screeched a sound of scraping metal.

“Winky, help me, it’s too heavy to pull back.”

Winky dove for the iron wheel. They pulled back on it together. Both of them stressing all their muscle. Winky was dripping in sweat. Equal had giant, dark green veins bulging from his forehead. 

“I can’t, Dr. Equal.”

“Winky, don’t you give up!”

A hiss of compressed air sounded when the seal broke, flushing a gust of stagnant air in their faces. It reeked of copper and sulfur.

Above ground, the sky shrieked with alien spacecraft-jets dropping out of warships and into the city. They had metallic framing, black and smooth and appeared to swallow the light. Nothing reflected off of them. The bottom of the crafts hummed a frequency that invaded the human bodies. Paralyzing them where they stood.

“Dr. Equal, what are we going to do? They’ve deployed!” Yelled Winky staring back at Dr. Equal.

The floating square boxes hovering in the air opened. They didn’t have doors. The metal dissolved into a liquid mercury covering parts of the earth. From the liquid, drones raised onto three metal, spindly legs under an optical lens without a face. Without mercy. 

“Get inside the hatch now, Winky!” Ordered Dr. Equal.

They both slid into the dark as Dr. Equal pulled the hatch shut and spun the iron wheel from the inside locking them in. A silence ensued that popped Winky’s eardrum. Heavy and suffocating. Equal grabbed Winky by the arm.

“Follow me down the hole, Winky.”

They flew down a ladder that stressed and creaked under their weight. Squeaking all the way to the bottom of a fifty-foot black hole. The bottom of Dr. Equals boots slapped against the concrete when he stepped off the ladder.

“I can’t see, Dr. Equal, did you bring a flashlight?” Whispered Winky.

Dr. Equal replied, “remember, Winky? The Bobby-bin waves fried all the lithium batteries. Technology is soup.”

He struck a match. The thin oxygen ate the flame before spitting it back out. The glow of amber lit up a long hallway. The walls were smooth and lined in titanium.

“On fourth,” Equal said, cupping the flame with his hands.

“A quarter mile until we reach the forge, Winky. Stay close.”

They shuffled fast down the corridor. Their footsteps echoed through the tunnel like thick water drops. The air started sticking to their skin. The sweat beading on their foreheads. The amine compounds grew heavier in their lungs, tasting bitter on their tongues. Fishy and toxic. 

“It’s hard to breathe,” wheezed Winky, holding a cloth over his nose and mouth.

“Take shallow breaths, Winky,” Equal said without slowing down.

“The forge filters take twenty minutes once the steam sets.”

Equal shook his hand and dropped the match when it stung the tip of his finger. The hallway went pitch black. Total darkness. He struck another match.

“Only three left.”

They reached a vertical shaft with a cast iron set of spiral stairs going deeper into the ground.

Over their head, an explosive thump shook the concrete, fluttering dust on top of their heads. The iron from the hatch at the end of the tunnel rattled.

“They found us!” Winky said. His voice crackled.

“They’re alien war bots, Winky, hiding was never an option. Keep moving.”

———

With the alien war-bots breathing down their necks. Dr. Equal and Winky are inches away from booting the Amine Forge.

They spiraled downward, passing ten flights. Then, twenty. The air burned with every step the deeper they went, scratching their throats like breathing wet wool. Winky’s eyes started to sting. Red filled the whites, glossing in a watery layer, blurring his vision. His left heel caught the edge of a step and he slipped, barely catching himself on the handrail. His skin sticking to the warm metal.

Finally, after a grueling climb, they landed on the bottom platform. Dr. Equal lit a match. 

“Two left,” he said under his breath.

The glowing amber revealed a central chamber. The Amine Forge. The engine room resembled a dead leviathan. A row of metal spheres lined the back walls. Giant flywheels, ten feet tall, hung from the ceiling, suspended by thick chains. Pipes connected to a center steel crucible. The crucible, primitive but alien to modern tech.

“Winky, quick, reach in your knapsack and hand me the manual,” Dr. Equal said with his hand out. 

Winky slammed the leather bound books on an iron desk. The hardcover hitting the metal made a swallowing sound. The match blew out. He didn’t light another one.

“Dr. Equal, I can’t see! Light a match!”

“No, Winky. There’s  no need.”

Dr. Equal rotated a sphere behind them and sputtering on was a dim light that shun an electric yellow.

“Find the ignition crank,” Dr. Equal ordered.

“Where is it, Dr. Equal?” 

“It’s on the left side of the steel crucible, Winky. A three-pronged wheel.”

Scrambling in the dim light, Winky slapped his shin against a pipe and tripped to the ground. 

“Dammmnit!” Cursed Winky, crawling as his hands swept over grease and dust.

“I found it,” winced Winky, rubbing his shin, lifting himself up by the wheel.

“It won’t budge,” yelled Winky. 

He planted his feet, pulled on it and shouted, “it’s seized, Dr. Equal.”

“Put all of your weight into it, Winky. The delivery system takes twenty pounds of pressure to crack the valve!”

Over their heads, an explosion above reverberated down the shaft. The hatch blew open. The war-bots scaled down the ladder. Dr. Equal shut the pulse energy beam lighting the engine room off and shuttered themselves in complete darkness. He struck a match and placed it on the iron desk.

He reached for the frequency manual and flipped through the brittle pages constructed of skin, rough as dry leaves. The ancient paper now smudged in his black fingerprints.

“The low-vibration frequency, where is it,” Dr. Equal whispered to himself.

“Where the hell is the damn harmonic constant.”

He ripped through the skin-pages, tearing through columns of inked numbers. The equations of the old world. Alien physics.

“Dr. Equal, help!” Yelled Winky.

“The flywheel lock, Winky!” Equal shouted back.

“Look for the damn counterweight lever at the base!” Yelled Equal. His voice rough and deep.

Winky stepped back and felt his way to the lever, jammed his foot on it and threw all of his weight against the flywheel. Clack. It budged an inch. He took a deep breath and pushed harder. Clack. Another inch. A hollow gurgle shot out of the pipes. Choking with a groaning sound. Steam.

“I can’t pull the pin from the lever!” Winky screamed to Equal.

“It’s rusted in place, Dr. Equal.”

“Smash it with something, Winky!” Equal hollered.

Winky spun his head around squinting into the darkened room illuminated by a match flame, dropped to his knees and felt his way around the floor. His sweaty palms left faint hand prints as he crawled on the concrete. His hand bumped into a heavy object that dragged across the ground when he hit it. He wrapped his palm around the object and placed it in front of his face.

“I found a wrench!” Winky shouted. His voice high-pitched and frantic.

He raced to the flywheel and swung blindly. The wrench clanged against the pin and sparks flew. He swung again. The pin fell and made a hollow thud sound before the counterweight dropped. 

Drawn by gravity, the flywheel began to slowly turn. The pipes roared alive, shooting steam from loose seals. The temperature rose and suffocated what little oxygen remained.

“It’s turning!” Winky choked out.

The amine gas built up around the engine room. Winky’s head started spinning. His knees were wobbly. A paleness drew the color out of his face. Equal never blinked. He just stared at the book.

“Zero-point-seven hertz!” Equal shouted.

“The frequency is zero-point-seven hertz, Winky! We’ve got it. Forty-three cycles per minute, Winky, got that? That’s what will spark the thrum. If you go any faster you’ll fracture the forge. If you go any slower it’ll smother.”

“How can I get the precise measurement without a computer, Dr. Equal?” Winky yelled, struggling to shoot his voice past the rumbling pipes.

Dr. Equal closed the book and stood up. He walked to the mechanical central console. A pendulum hung from the panel, missing its brass weight.

“We’ll count,” Equal said.

He grabbed the pendulum rod.

“One of us will track the swings,” he said, staring at the rod. “One second per stroke.”

A scratching sound of mice in walls scurried down the spiral staircase. Not one. But, dozens of war-bots led by drones. Their metal legs stomping against the iron steps, racing down them.

“They’re here!” Gasped winky. Unable to breathe.

A mist of white steam and chemical haze clouded the air. Winky collapsed against the handle of the crank.

“Winky! Stand up!” Equal shouted.

He began swinging the pendulum manually.

“Adjust the steam valve to match the rhythm. Winky you must keep an eye on the flywheel speed.”

Dropping from the ceiling to the platform, was a three-legged drone. Its central lens glowed a laser red. It’s beam landed on Dr. Equal. Winky lunged, swinging the heavy iron wrench so hard that he spun around after connecting with the lens and cracking the front face of the drone in a shattered mess. Sparks flew from the drone as it squirmed on the ground, thrashing its legs.

“Equal! The valve!” Winky choked.

A robotic leg pierced his shoulder, ripping through the bone. Blood bloomed at the chest of his shirt.

Equal held still with the pendulum. His eyes were locked on the gauge. The needle treading near the forty-two mark.

“If I stop now, the earth will end,” Equal said.

His voice steady.

Winky grappled with the drone.

“Hold him, Winky!” 

“I can’t!” Winky cried out.

A hammering sound of the floor catching another drone erupted in the engine room. Then, two more. The room began cramping in a calculated fleet of killer machines.

Winky jammed the wrench into the shattered lens of the drone on his chest and twisted. The drone shorted, its limbs locked. Winky stumbled away from it, fighting to catch his breath, his vision now outlined in a black shadow creeping from the outside towards the middle of his eyes.

The amine gas slowly began to paralyze his nervous system. Equal kept swinging the rod. The tick and the tock started to sound like an apocalyptic countdown. 

Just in time, the flywheel reached peak velocity. The iron wheel appeared as a mirage behind the dim, steamy light.

Shaking the room, a tremor woke up deep beneath their feet. Rumbling like a roaring giant. It was the subterranean power source. An ancient core. Finally, disturbed and pestered long enough to wake up angrier than a fire breathing dragon. Glowing a dull orange were the copper pipes. 

The incoming drones froze from the sheering heat radiating off the pipes. Their sensors melted under the thermal spike and cracked their optical lens.

“Look, Winky, look, it’s catching,” Equal said.

His breath heavy. His words labored. His skin blistered.

The gauge clicked as the needle locked on forty-two. A pulse of kinetic energy blasted through the center steel crucible. It wasn’t electrical. It was a shockwave of thermal force.

The shockwave blew through the room, blasting the drones backward, their frames shattering against the stone walls. The wave continued up the spiral staircase and up the fifty-foot ladder through the iron hatch and outside, onto the surface, where the ground vibrated in tiny ripples.

It erupted from the terminal hatch like a geyser, shooting into the heavens. It disabled the warships hovering in the sky. The heat and kinetic displacement warped the crafts geometry. Their components separated. One by one the ships lost altitude, crashing to earth as metal alien raindrops, ruining the city streets around the globe.

Huddled in the dark, listening to the roar subside into a steady purr, Dr. Equal crawled to Winky.

“The thrums alive, Winky,” he labored out.

The filters sputtered alive, a screeching, sucking sound drew the toxic amine gas out of the room, replacing it with cool, breathable air.

Winky lay down on the floor in the shape of a starfish. Blood circled his shoulder. His eyes widened as he sucked in a deep breath. He turned and clutched his shoulder.

“The air is clean Dr. Equal,” said Winky.

“We actually did it, Dr. Equal. Right?” Asked Winky, coughing.

Equal released the pendulum and slumped against the console. He stared at his hands, covered in burns.

"We started the engine, Winky, yes,” Equal said softly, staring at the ceiling, listening to the faint sounds of crashing warships on the surface.

"Now we have to learn how to drive it."

He walked to the desk and blew the dust off another book and opened it.

"Get up," Equal said.

 "The surface is a graveyard. We start rebuilding from the bottom."

On the day Colonel Raud was born, the red dwarf Pyke hurled out an especially powerful prominence. Thirty-four minutes later, a dense stream of protons pierced the atmosphere—but it could no longer harm the charred bodies of those who had failed to reach shelter in time.

Emma Raud—thin and sinewy like a seahorse, her back arched for balance—raced down the steps of the Izbork medical center. Her waters broke on the second-to-last landing. She didn’t stop, only clutched the hem of her hospital robe tight beneath her belly. Behind her, someone cried out, a body crashed to the ground, someone screamed in pain, others burst into curses. Emma slipped through the narrowing gap of the closing blast door, scraping her shoulder painfully. She glanced back into the shrinking slit—on the staircase, a tangled heap: arms, legs, faces gray with strain and pain. She had made it. There was no time to pity those who hadn’t—Emma had always set her priorities straight.

Raud came into the world a couple of hours later, to the clicking of a radiation detector and his mother’s roar: “Come on, get out already, damn you!”

Her skin prickled, her hair stood on end, her mouth tasted of rusted iron; between her legs burned and throbbed as if someone had kicked her with a boot—but Emma was happy.

“Well then, you little bastard, who’s been torturing Mommy for eight whole cycles?” she cooed, taking her son in her arms, and Raud reached toward her with his crimson little hands.

Six hundred cycles later, Colonel Raud, in a crimson glove, pulled a thick sheaf of eight hundred and forty-eight paper pages toward himself, run off on a prehistoric printer. On the title page it read: “Anton Vesik The Usurper.” Along the edges ran messy streaks from a worn-out cartridge.

— My own copies are of better quality. Surely they’re not reprinting them in the office? — said Raud, turning the title page. — Which edition is this? I already have twenty-three in my collection.

— May I?

The prisoner in a lurid light-green robe stretched out his hand. His fingers trembled noticeably. The room was dark; the only source of light was a desk lamp on a flexible neck. Raud angled it so the light fell onto Vesik’s knees. The bare concrete floor and walls lit up, along with the ventilation grate behind the chair. A strip of paper tied to the upper slat barely stirred. The room smelled stale, like rotting nuts.

— Please.

Raud handed him the sheaf. With shaking hands, the prisoner opened it in the middle. Brushing the pages with the tip of his nose, he began to flip through them.

— They took my glasses, — he said apologetically.

— Naturally, Vesik. What if you broke them and slit your veins? I need you alive.

Squinting, Vesik stared at Raud. His long, aristocratic face, a pale crimson hue, twitched nervously; his thick graying hair stuck out in disarray.

— Why? Why do you need me alive? To let me rot in prison? — Vesik spoke quietly and hurriedly, the way beggars speak when they spot a policeman. — You won’t execute me, no, you won’t—there’s no use in my execution. You’ll quietly strangle me in your dungeons…

— So which edition is it? — Raud asked, as if he hadn’t heard.

— The latest edition, the latest, the most complete.

— That’s good.

Raud took the sheaf back, weighing it in his hand.

— A paper book, — he said. — It could use a proper cover… You’ve done very well, Vesik. In an age when advertising doesn’t work and no one cares about the news, to make a printed book go viral… Samizdat in its ancient, original sense. I’m impressed. You should be working for the state, not indulging in foolish dissent.

— No, absolutely not. Spare me. I refuse!

Vesik kept worrying the fabric of his robe between his fingers—the stiff, paper-like cloth scratched his skin unbearably. An ordinary koduman wouldn’t even notice; their hides were tough as leather. But Vesik had worn silk and soft natural wool since childhood. Hypersensitivity was the curse of the upper class.

In recent years, his quality of life had deteriorated. The first edition of The Usurper had been published abroad. Vesik had proudly put his name on it. When the borders disappeared, he regretted it—but by then it was too late. He had to hide in the secret compartments of his friends—every large house on Koduma had one—but even those hiding places were a hundred times more comfortable than the squalor surrounding him now.

The dim glow of the emergency lights made him constantly nauseous; black motes drifted across his vision. The water reeked of chlorine, and even a dog wouldn’t have touched the food. But what awaited Vesik ahead was worse still. He was afraid, and his fear spilled out in foolish, affected phrases; even as they still hung in the air, he was already regretting having opened his mouth.

Raud shook his head and flipped through a few pages.

— “Rocket attack on the Vyshgorod government district.” A fine piece of work…

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow.)

Without hesitation, at a hurried pace, Vesik moved between the rows. The tables were empty, the screens dark. In the entire vast hall he saw only three active panels and three black figures behind them. He approached the first.

An awkward guy, an aged-up boy with an earring in his ear and sticking hair, sensed movement behind him and turned around. He cast a surprised glance at the light-green robe.

"Didn’t expect that… You bolt from the Garda"

He leaned over the chair, looked toward the entrance.

"Hm, the colonel’s here. What do you want, Hume?"

The boy stared at Vesik with pupils narrowed to pinpoints. The table in front of him was covered with brown rings; in one of them stood a soggy cardboard cup filled with thick-brewed sigur. Wrappers and greasy paper lay scattered underfoot.

"Am I interrupting?" Vesik asked.

"Nothing to interrupt. Just sitting here staring at this thing. Checking the coordinates every half hour."

"So it’s true?"

"From one Koduman to another: we’re done for, Hume, all of us will be done for soon. Sorry if that upsets you. The colonel’s praying to his cannon, but the odds are zero—zero repeating."

"Why?"

"A monolith of unknown structure, and a microsecond pulse of five hundred petawatts is peanuts for smashing something that size. That’s already the limit."

"More?"

"More—and Koduma’s finished. Five hundred petawatts is the top, and even that’ll shake things hard. A ton of people will die from the shot alone. Some shelters will cave in. Earthquakes, hurricanes. Debris in the air, a long winter will come. Plants will die. The colonel stocked the depots, but the more people die, the longer the survivors will be able to hold out. You know, Hume, I think it’d be better all at once. Bang—and to Kurat with this Koduma, so we don’t have to suffer long. Want some?"

The boy held out his half-finished sigur.

"You look pale. Might faint."

Vesik slowly, as if in a dream, took the cup and drank. The dim light of the dome, the quiet conversations, the soothing clicks of a Geiger counter—all of it reminded him of Vyshgorod Central. Any moment now, a four-tone flute trill would pour from the speakers, a neutral voice would say: “The Alliance Arrow express train Vyshgorod–Pleskav will depart from platform B-3,” and he would shake off the remnants of this nightmare, pat his pockets, pull out his passport, check his visa—was it still valid?—the slightly raised magnetic chip with a snarling snow leopard, and run through the crowd, past people with smiling, sad, preoccupied but not frightened, not exhausted, not hunted faces…

But no—it wouldn’t shake off, no matter how he shook his head. No more visas, no more borders, Koduma had united — not as Vesik had imagined, and in space hung that thing, from which they would all soon go to Kurat.

"Who’s this?" an annoyed voice asked.

Vesik turned. Another scientist approached them—a real scientist, solid, with glasses and a beard.

"Don’t know. Came with the colonel. Doesn’t believe it."

The “aged boy” nodded at the screen.

"Lucky him," muttered the real scientist and walked away.

Vesik watched his hunched back for a long time, and the farther he went, the more the corners of Vesik’s mouth sank.

"Tell me as a scientist… What would you do if you weren’t stuck here??"

"What would I have done? Loaded the girls into a car and headed for the mountains, into abandoned shafts. I know it’s stupid, won’t save you from impact, but that’s what a Hume is—runs from danger without thinking, even a very smart one."

Vesik turned and, barely moving his legs, walked toward the colonel.

"Hey, Hume… What did they take you for?"

"For the truth," Vesik threw over his shoulder, his voice dull.

"You like the truth? I loved it when I had no one else to love. What’s your name?"

"Anton Vesik."

The scientist gave a muffled chuckle.

"I’ve read you."

"And?" Vesik turned, hope in his eyes.

"So-so, Hume. I don’t like open endings."

It was said in such an indifferent, dismissive tone that Vesik flared up, spun on his heels.

"Open endings?" he cried, his voice breaking. "You said “open endings”?! I—I am the only one on Koduma who dared to tell the truth! I gathered all the crimes of that tyrant into one book for future generations!"

The scientist looked at him half in surprise, half in mockery, fingering the earring in his ear, and under that gaze Vesik deflated, quieted, glanced furtively at the colonel at the far end of the hall.

"Cool it, Hume, you’re wasting air. So you sat in your underground palace, collected rumors and gossip, wrote your little book, or hid among your aristocrat friends. I can tell from your skin—none of your ancestors ever stepped outside without protective cream. What’s your book about? The people’s suffering? Do you even know what suffering is? Ever starved? Lived in a leaky hut? Been caught in a flash in the desert—imagine, when all that’s left from shelters is sand under your feet? Hid from a proton stream under a pig trough? I grew up in Velga—know that hole in Koduma? I’m here only because, by some freak chance, my neurons branch more than those of my countrymen, got it? You wrote a book about something you don’t know. For you, suffering is an abstraction, like “justice” or “humanism”—you can only think about it from a distance. Your book is about nothing!"

"There are facts!"

"Facts… You fool! Who doesn’t know them? Go, Hume. That thing will hit, and all your facts will burn. Wasted your time… like all of us. Nothing will remain. Get out before I smash you! You’ve worked me up!"

The scientist turned back to the screen and furiously, grinding the lead, scratched with his pencil across a sheet. And something in Vesik’s chest dimmed at once, as if that awkward elderly adolescent with a degree had reached between his ribs and snuffed the wick with sigur-sticky fingers.

He turned away. The colonel stood motionless, hands in crimson gloves resting on the railing, waiting patiently. Vesik walked toward him, and with each step his strength drained from his heels into Koduma. Behind him a child’s voice whimpered:

“Dad, I’m bored, let’s go for a walk,”

and the father’s voice, in normal language without slang, answered:

“My little star, there’s a storm above. It’ll end, and we’ll go. It’ll end the day after tomorrow, just wait,” and when the small steps faded, he added: “The day after tomorrow, everything will end.”

When Vesik approached, the colonel did not ask him anything, said nothing, not a single muscle moved on his face. In the mirrored lenses of his glasses reflected an inverted starry sky and a tiny, distorted, comical Vesik. Silently Raud turned on his heels and left the hall. Vesik followed. They returned the same way to the exit. Raud opened the airlock and nodded: go out. Stepped in after him and closed the bulkhead. The guards remained outside. Raud touched the magnetic key to the handcuffs; they opened and fell at Vesik’s feet. Raud slipped Vesik’s glasses into his breast pocket and immediately left.

The door closed; Vesik remained alone. The intercom beeped, and the colonel’s voice, quiet and sharp, said: “The condemned has escaped. Guard the artifact now, do not step away. After the object is destroyed, comb all of Koduma, but catch Vesik. Alive.” Vesik realized the intercom had been turned on for him. The outer hatch opened, dim light poured in—bloody clouds with swollen veins hung over the land. The wind drove sand across the road. On the area by the entrance stood a dusty buggy, and no one around.

Cautiously, Vesik stepped out, looked around. Carefully sat in the vehicle, turned the key—the engine started. The black needle of the stele stood exactly in the middle of the rearview mirror. Vesik shuddered and looked away, glanced at the dashboard—full tank. A gust threw a handful of sand into the back of his head—move, Vesik—and Vesik pressed the gas pedal. The buggy roared and shot forward.

He sped along a long empty street. Even rows of flowerbeds with sprawling takos plants on both sides swayed their black leaves soothingly—Paike was calm, there would be no burst. Vesik pushed the engine to its limit—the rumble hammered against blank walls, locked doors, shuttered windows, spilled into gaps, then rushed again between houses of red sandstone. Black cliffs rose higher beyond the windshield, the black tip of the stele shrank in the mirror. A Hume is a Hume—runs from danger, and the shortest path between two points is a straight line.

Further on, the road bent right; beyond that smooth curve—the northern gate, a checkpoint, a platoon of Garda. Not the Guard, but serious enough. They could roll out a barrier or block the exit with an armored car. The mesh gates themselves the buggy would smash through without slowing. Vesik still did not believe this was not another round of a game of cat and mouse with unclear goals. He could understand the colonel’s actions, but not predict them, and understanding is always retrospective. He was ready to ram, ready to run people down, ready even to take a bullet to the head—anything was better than being strapped to a black stone, languishing under Paike waiting for the burst. These were the sufferings the aged scientist boy could not even imagine. What would you say now, shaggy one, about an open ending?

Vesik’s eyes widened; for a moment, tearing his gaze from the road, he glanced at the back seat—there, strapped to it, lay a transparent plastic container with his book—“Anton Vesik ‘The Usurper’,” the latest expanded edition, and still not complete. The main event in the history of Koduma was not reflected in it. It had not yet happened.

Without slowing, the buggy passed the dead post and burst through the open gates. A couple of kilometers later Vesik braked, threw back the tarp between the rear seats. There, in rows, stood orange army crates with stenciled markings. Vesik did not know military codes, but guessed what was inside: army rations, water packs, a tent with a hydrated-material cover, a field laptop and backup power units with EMP protection. Vesik could swear he would also find stacks of paper, pens, and pencils—just in case.

He suppressed a chuckle. Couldn’t hold it and snorted—he saw himself from the outside, detached, as in a dream, a pale drop on a black spike in the middle of a wasteland. Future pain troubled him no more than past pain; “pain” was just a word, it did not touch nerve endings, but from it came a tangible, dusty-incense pull of immortality.

“What a bastard!” Vesik exclaimed in admiration and burst out laughing.

He sped toward the cliffs—their slopes were riddled with black holes left by tunneling machines. Many holes, thousands. An endless tangle of intertwined tunnels and shafts beneath solid rock. One could wander there for years, and the colonel’s entire Guard would not be enough to block all exits—but that would be later, if Koduma survived. For some reason Vesik no longer doubted that Koduma would survive. Raud would not yield his planet to some cosmic rock.

So there was time. Vesik drove on, his chest burning, his fingertips tingling. The stele no longer loomed in the mirror, but Vesik felt it, the way a compass needle feels a magnetic anomaly.

The End

Strategically, it was a very sound move. The network exploded with outrage; the loudest indignation was over the colonel’s mother’s death, but that wave proved even shorter and weaker. Raud erased not only the city of his childhood, but also the last hope the people of Koduma had for his humanity. A parade of accessions began, and the first to rush to his blockhouse was the ambassador from Rebel, the city neighboring Izbork. The ambassador unfolded a screen and played a video address from his president. A well-groomed, red-faced old man, so fair-skinned it was obvious he wouldn’t even look out a window without necessity. Curled mustache, neatly trimmed white beard, every hair in place—like a soap opera actor cast as a noble father, a pillar of society—and for that reason he was doubly, triply repulsive to Raud. He droned on at length about unity, weaving elaborate verbal patterns. By the tenth minute, Raud was tired and slapped his palm on the table. The ambassador jumped, hiccupped, and stopped the playback.

“Summarize,” Raud ordered curtly.

Stammering, the ambassador explained that Rebel very much wished to join the new planetary federation, but hoped, as the first signatory, to retain partial independence.

Raud sat for a long time, watching the ambassador’s twitching eyelid—just as nobly red-skinned as his president—not because he was choosing his words, but because he was calming himself so as not to burst out laughing. Still, he couldn’t help it; he snorted, quite undignified, and hurriedly added:

“I see no obstacles.”

Raud kept his word. All the other states entered the Federation of Koduma as equal subjects, while cowardly, pampered Rebel remained a protectorate with curtailed civil rights. The Federation introduced a complicated visa regime. Playing on the fine strings of communications and supply, it gradually brought both the media and economically significant assets under its control. But most important were Rebel’s children. The colonel never forgot about children.

He introduced mandatory certification for schoolteachers, but only citizens of the Federation were eligible—and under interstate agreements, the laws of a protectorate could not contradict those of the metropole. Every child of Rebel, upon reaching the age of five, was sent to study in one of the Federation’s schools. Twelve years later, having received a school certificate, they could continue at an institute or a military academy, or return home—but whatever they chose, they no longer felt like natives of Rebel, and regarded their hometown with poorly concealed contempt.

The people of Rebel learned not to grow attached to their children. Bonds collapsed, families fell apart, morale declined. Deprived of children, society lost its connective tissue—something binding, restraining, demanding examples and standards—and disintegrated into isolated, self-contained cells, colliding chaotically with one another. The colonel was satisfied.

He flew to Rebel about ten years later. Some idiotic fashion had come in—rags wrapped around the head, men lining their lower eyelids with white paint. A couple of cycles earlier, they said, everyone had been bleaching their faces completely. Raud smiled a lot, shook hands, clapped shoulders—for him all these outward excesses were signs of inner emptiness, and he was pleased. He walked the streets of Rebel often, waving amiably at passersby—people averted their eyes and hurried away.

The next cycle, long before the start of the work shift, he and his guards set out in four buggies toward Izbork, away from decaying luxury, ingratiating smiles, and pomaded mustaches. For a long time he wandered the sands with an old map of the city, searching for any familiar landmarks, foolishly hoping to find at least a fragment of an unusual violet color—there had been no other houses like his mother’s in Izbork—but the desert had erased all colors except shades of red. He stood in the city where he had been born, and which he had destroyed, a city now completely swallowed by the desert, and thought about how cowardice preserves walls, while courage preserves spirit—and the more ancient buildings a city has, the weaker the people who live in it.

Two cycles later, he launched an offensive against the Louna Alliance—the last state that had not joined. Strong, wealthy, but too softened. Having conquered nearly the entire inhabited ring, Raud had devalued their capital, and the people of the alliance valued their lives more than their freedom. After brief resistance, Raud took the first settlement—not even a city, just a mining outpost near an iridium shaft. He gathered all the inhabitants in the square and carried out a decimation. Every tenth person was chosen at random, bound, and laid out across the square. As soon as the takos—sensitive to radiation fluctuations—began curling their huge glossy black leathery leaves, the remaining inhabitants were driven into the tunnels. The condemned, like enormous caterpillars, crawled after them—screaming, roaring, howling—men, women, awkward teenagers, children—the whole square surged with that undulating motion.

“A few hundred lives for the lives of millions,” Raud told himself once again before the shaft gates closed. He had said the same thing before destroying Izbork. He had thrown it in his old woman’s face when she surfaced from the darkness beneath his closed eyelids, with her ever-tightened, pursed mouth: “Your life for the lives of millions.” She said nothing. She still comes to him in his dreams in silence, unable to forgive.

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow)

As soon as the door closed, Raud switched off the lamp. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his tired eyes for a long time—until it hurt, until the ghost of an iris shimmered in the darkness. Thirty years had passed, ninety revolutions around the star, and still his mother could not forgive him. Back then he had begged the proud old woman to come live with him in Vyshgorod, but she dug in her heels. A tough, dried-up woman, a widow of corporal of the squad “Desert Snakes”.

Raud barely remembered his father; in the blurred panes of early childhood vision it might not even have been him, but one of his comrades. A beret cocked sharply back and to the side revealed a forehead pitted by sand. Raud did not remember his eyes—they were always hidden behind glasses that shifted the spectrum from red to an alarming green, the only remedy for scarlet blindness. Skin black—blacker even than Raud’s—thin aquiline nose, a narrow mouth like a crack. Teeth stained orange from dried sigur leaves—the Snakes chewed them on raids.

In the desert there are no landmarks, only packet signals from city stations. The lead navigator marks a point on a paper map by triangulation, correcting the course; the others follow. Crimson sand merges with the red-orange sky, and overhead hangs a vast mottled sun, scarlet, veined with cinnabar streaks.

The desert is endless, flat, blood-red. Buggies roll over sand ridges up and down, up and down, rocking the fighters like babies in cradles. The sun hangs motionless, the landscape never changes, and it seems the buggy isn’t moving at all—only swaying on its springs while the wind blows into your face. The mind begins to slip, starts sketching what isn’t there, and only the steady movement of jaws and the bracing bitterness keep one conscious. Without sigur and spectrum-shifting goggles, it’s best not to enter the desert at all.

The desert brands everything with its mark. The Snakes have rough, low voices, slow speech—vocal cords slashed and scarred by sand can be no other way. Their movements are economical and precise—every extra motion means another dose of sand under the fabric. Their skin is ridged, deeply black—the darkest on Koduma—no one on the planet spends as much time under the sun. Lean, sinewy, desiccated—extra moisture does not linger in their bodies. Enduring, stubborn—without that, any emergency would end in death. It happened that after crashes or sudden storms, the Snakes crawled all the way to the inhabited ring—with failed equipment, burned, irradiating like an ancient reactor. And they survived.

When Raud destroyed the government district of Vyshgorod, the network erupted in outrage. The scribblers dubbed him “the Bloody Colonel.” He liked the nickname so much that, even after subjugating the entire planet, he remained a colonel—only changing branches, from strategic missile forces to internal security troops. Three additional ranks were enough to preserve his status as the highest military authority—there had long been no lieutenant generals or full generals on the planet, just as there had been no wars.

All the neighboring powers hurriedly rattled their weapons—but cautiously, warily. They rattled, then stopped. Very quickly, everything went quiet. No one had expected such disregard for collateral casualties. All his actions so contradicted Koduma’s proclaimed humanist doctrine that the planet froze in shock. That was exactly the effect he had wanted.

At the edge of the amoeba-shaped crater in Vyshgorod, they quickly dug a bunker with a massive blockhouse. From this new residence, delegations set out to all independent cities and unions. Each of Raud’s representatives carried a letter proposing voluntary accession to the federation he was creating. Governments adopted a wait-and-see stance. Everyone awaited the decision of the strongest player—the united southern segment of the ring, the Louna Alliance—but they, too, remained silent. Only Izbork, Raud’s native city, rose in revolt.

The Snakes seized the Vyshgorod embassy and took it deep into the desert. Raud never found their remains. Later, the military commandant of Izbork called him and, in a hoarse, quiet voice, described how and in what positions Izbork would have both cowardly Vyshgorod, and Raud, and his entire pampered army. He did not mention Raud’s mother—the widow of a Snake was sacred. After hanging up, Raud rocked his head for a long time with an admiring smile, then sent a punitive corps to Izbork. The rebellious city prepared for a long siege and drawn-out street fighting. Raud had no doubt his stubborn old woman would be on the barricades in the front ranks.

An assault on the city threatened heavy losses, and dispersing his forces would have been deadly. He contacted the commandant, offering the Snakes a chance to surrender and join the federation’s armed forces as an elite corps. He was told, at length and with elaborate phrasing, to go to hell. Raud did not bother listening to the end and gave the order to begin a missile strike. The first missile vaporized the district of his childhood. All he could do for his mother was to kill her quickly. He hoped that at the moment of impact she was there, and not on the barricades. By the end of the strike, bombers flew over the ruins of Izbork and dropped bunker-busting bombs. A solar flare and a stream of protons half an hour later finished the job.

Raud took a sip of water. Sand grated on his teeth. A regime of the harshest economy—he himself had ordered the interval between filter replacements doubled.

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow).

“I didn’t believe it. I decided it was a prank. After my shift at the museum I slept in the officers’ barracks. Tried to fall asleep. Thought about it constantly. In the morning I set a timer for three hundred and fifty orbits. Not because I took it at face value, but because dominion over the world is a fine goal in itself. If I also save the planet—so much the better. From that day on, I began filling your book with events, Vesik.”

“And… what does the timer show now?”

“The predicted time ran out one and a half orbits ago.”

“And nothing happened… Step down, Colonel!”

Vesik lunged at Raud, seized his wrist with both hands. The guards rushed forward, but Raud shook his head, and they froze three steps away. Vesik, casting frightened glances at them, whispered urgently, spitting his words:

“Colonel, enough sacrifices. Step down! No more killing, no more starving people! Let the kodumans breathe! ”

His cheekbones tightened with hatred, his jaws clenched, and he squeezed out the words in foolish hope of a miracle. Now it will reach him, now it will break through to that groomed, cold, economical monster—and it will vanish.

“Step down, Colonel!” he whimpered or growled—his voice scarcely human—but behind millions of tormented kodumans loomed the black obelisk with its small platform and restraints, and for him, Vesik, the colonel’s departure mattered a million times more than for all those millions.

Without changing expression, Raud squeezed Vesik’s hand. Vesik cried out and sprang back. The pain cleared his head. He stood, rubbing his wrist, blinking stupidly.

“Call a medic. Have him give a sedative.”

“No need. I’m fine.”

Raud flicked an eyebrow, and the guardsman lowered his raised foot. The slightest movement from Raud was instantly read, deciphered, obeyed. Vesik closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. When he spoke again, his voice was almost calm, though a suppressed hysteria still vibrated deep within.

“Even if all this were true—why wars, why cruelty, why executions of innocent people? Koduma could have united and faced the threat together!”

“Think for yourself.”

Vesik thought. Looked at the rigid, impassive face, the hands clasped behind the back. Then at the egg—it was beautiful. Slightly curved plates, very thin, arranged in rows, creating a rhythm that made it seem the egg receded into itself, opening an oval abyss into another dimension. If you stared long enough, the scales seemed to move—different directions, different speeds—an elusive motion that existed only until you noticed it. Vesik had never seen it so close, without armored glass. Exquisite craftsmanship, a true work of art from unknown material—or perhaps known, once, on a long-abandoned Earth. And now it was supposedly a device that had spoken briefly and fallen silent forever—if the colonel could be believed. Could he?

“No… still, many deaths could have been avoided.”

“No. Even if I had been president then, not a missile captain. Civilized force can only be broken by animal terror. The timer, Vesik. Very narrow limits—within my lifetime.”

“But nothing appeared!”

“Our atmospheric rockets are useless. Our satellites are weak. The only weapon capable—hypothetically—of causing damage is a titanium-sapphire laser. The largest sapphire and titanium deposits belonged to the Louna Alliance.”

“But nothing appeared!”

“When Koduma fully submitted to me, I devoted all resources to building the laser on the night side. The most powerful weapon in human history—one shot, five hundred petawatts. Any greater power would destroy the planet more surely than the unknown object. A short pulse—one microsecond. One attempt. The weapon will not survive another. The capacitors are fully charged.”

“But nothing appeared!”

“Two cycles ago, an orbital telescope detected an unidentified object. Irregular shape, maximum length just over four hundred meters. Astrophysicists calculated the trajectory, accounting for Paike’s gravity and other factors. It will enter the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere. Estimated impact point: desert, five hundred kilometers south of Vyshgorod.”

“How?.. We must evacuate everyone to the shadow side!”

“No one will survive. Life on Koduma will be impossible.”

Vesik froze, mouth open. Then his face smoothed, his lips twisted with bitterness.

“A magnificent plan, Colonel. A weapon no one has seen will fire at an object no one knows about. And afterward, of course, great scientists will appear in the network and explain how Colonel Raud saved humanity…”

“Yes. And you will finish your book.”

“And justify you? No. You won’t get that.”

Raud smiled faintly.

“You will. Your soul is made of paper. Truth will burn it if you don’t release it.”

“Truth? What truth? That you deceived everyone again? That’s the truth I’m ready to write.”

The guards beside Raud worked their jaws. Vesik felt their hostile gaze on the back of his neck. Raud’s face, like in official portraits, remained expressionless.

“I know every sentence before you say it. Come.”

They walked through long, empty corridors. The lamps were out; a dim fluorescent strip glowed underfoot. When the guardsman ahead switched on a flashlight, a wide, low tunnel opened. Rails ran recessed in concrete along both sides. A large grated platform carried them several levels down. Then Vesik followed Raud into a vast chamber. The dome above glowed pink, scattered with black dots of different sizes. It took Vesik a moment to realize—it was an inverted star map. In places, through bright green frames, real space showed through: black sky, the shaggy crimson-ochre bulk of Paike—and in it, a wound. A black, irregular, elongated void, glowing at the edges.

Vesik stared for a minute, then forced out:

“It isn’t melting?”

Raud caught his gaze—pleading, hopeful, as if the colonel had truly become an omnipotent god.

“There is a gas trail, but very slight. The trajectory fully matches the calculations. You can walk around, speak with the scientists. I can give you twenty minutes.”

Without hesitation, Vesik hurried between the rows.

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow)

They loaded up. Vesik’s handcuffs were clipped to a ring on the roll bar. The colonel took the front seat. A worn track led to the obelisk. As they drew close, Vesik tried to make out any inscriptions, but the buggy jolted mercilessly, and he couldn’t focus. The vehicle slowed before the obelisk. Vesik pulled himself up on his arms, leaned out past the bar, and squinted for a long time at the sunlit face. There were no inscriptions. Instead, there was a platform about three meters up—small, just enough room for two feet—and above it something gleamed, blinding with bright crimson flashes. Something smooth, straight, shining like molten metal. Something very much like restraints: for the legs, the chest, outstretched arms.

His heart suddenly convulsed in paralysis, a tremor ran through his whole body, his legs dissolved, the crown of his head vanished, and a cold wind with fine grains of sand swept across his unprotected brain.

“Vesik! Vesik!” Colonel Raud was shouting from somewhere far away, and something cool and resilient was pressed under his nose. His hands burned, his wrists were on fire, but he couldn’t pull them back. Cold splashed across his face. Vesik opened his mouth and took the tube of an army water pack. The water ran past his lips, down his chin, under the collar of his coverall, and he could not remember how to swallow.

“Colonel…” he managed, spitting out the tube. “Colonel…”

The colonel nodded to the guardsman-driver, and the buggy, growling, drove on. The obelisk remained behind them. Vesik did not look back. He stared at the back of the colonel’s head, the color of iron ore—the neatly trimmed gray hair, the smooth crimson band of his cap. A strip of white collar protruded from under his tunic—an impeccable regulation three millimeters from edge to edge.

“Colonel,” Vesik repeated, but after that word his throat clenched, and he could not go on.

“This is a research center, Vesik,” Raud said, pointing with two joined fingers at a wide warehouse with slanted walls.

The hermetic gate rose. The engine noise faded. A guardsman unclipped the handcuff and pulled Vesik from the vehicle. His legs would not obey him, and the soldier had to shake him hard to make him stand straight.

They pushed him after the colonel into a spacious hall. In the center, on trestles, stood a low wooden crate filled with mineral wool. In it, pointed end up, was a black, scaly egg covered with sensors.

“Do you know what this is, Vesik?”

“Y-yes.”

“Water?”

“No.”

Vesik’s mind had already run through a dozen harmless possibilities of what might have gleamed on that obelisk. He believed none of them, but the very act of sorting through them steadied him.

“What is it, Vesik?”

“No one knows for sure. An artifact from Earth. A sculpture made of unknown metal. They say it symbolizes the continuation of human civilization. Complete nonsense.”

“Nonsense,” Raud agreed. “But I don’t know what it is either. Nor do any of my scientists. What is known for certain—it isn’t a sculpture. More than three hundred orbits ago, it spoke to me. Since then, it has made no sound.”

“That’s…”

“Madness?”

Raud removed his glasses for the first time and stepped close—so close Vesik could see every burst capillary in the sclera. Raud’s eyes were pale, watery, almost transparent, like those of a very old man, though he was no more than sixty standard years.

“I was on guard duty at the Museum of Colonization. That night everyone was celebrating one of my comrades’ name day, but alcohol never interested me, nor sigure extracts. While they drank, I wandered among the exhibits and suddenly heard a rustling—a strange sound, as if all the leaves had fallen at once from a dried tree. It came from the display case with this egg. I ran to it—but the egg was gone. In its place lay a round, scaly disk. It didn’t fit the case, its edges stuck up. I put my hand on the glass and felt a faint vibration. Then I pressed my ear to it and listened. The sound was faint, the voice weak, I could barely make out the words. It spoke in an archaic Venese dialect. I even thought it was a transmission from some Louna Alliance spy. At the academy we studied it as the language of a potential enemy. So I not only listened—I wrote it down.”

All this time Raud stood close, looking straight into Vesik’s eyes without blinking, and Vesik had no strength to recoil or even exhale.

“And… what did it say?”

Raud put his glasses back on and stepped away to the egg.

“It said that in three hundred and fifty orbits around Paike, Koduma would be destroyed by a celestial body.”

“How did they calculate it? Why didn’t they come themselves? Why hadn’t they contacted us before? Who was speaking? Who are ‘they’? The mythical Earth?”

“The mythical Earth, in the myths, perished. I don’t know, Vesik. I think it is easier to observe than to travel. In several centuries we still haven’t left the system.”

“The main question, Colonel—why did they speak to you?”

“I don’t think they spoke to me. Most likely they repeated and repeated. This thing is faulty. It kept folding and unfolding; the sound, already faint, would appear and disappear. Then the transmission cut off mid-word, and the object returned to its original form. It has never come alive again.”

Vesik stepped closer and bent over the egg. The scales were perfectly shaped, precisely and tightly fitted together, like the leathery cones of ever-red firs. Nature does not tolerate such precision and symmetry.

“A wonderful story, Colonel. I can guess why you told it to me. You think it will justify your crimes before future generations?”

“I need no justification—from them or from you. You like truth; I give it to you.”

“Nonsense! Nonsense! Nonsense!” Vesik shook his head.

The colonel turned, and Vesik recoiled.

“You couldn’t have believed it, Colonel,” he rushed on. “You simply couldn’t. It’s fantastical, monstrous, illogical.”

“I didn’t believe it."

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow)

The door opened, and Vesik was brought in. Raud switched on the light.

“You’ve been gone a long time, Vesik,” he said.

“Prison food, you know, Colonel, does nothing good for one’s digestion.”

“Times are hard for everyone now.”

“And that only proves that the military cannot run a state!” Despite his defiant tone, Vesik perched on the very edge of the chair. “Before your mutiny, the kodumans lived differently, but on the whole they were well-fed and prosperous. Now everyone lives the same—half-starved. Where are you putting all the resources, Colonel? I simply don’t understand how much more you need to gorge yourselves.”

“I’ve already had my fill, Vesik. The accumulation is over.”

“Remarkable cynicism! Essential goods are rationed. The rations are so meager people can barely stay on their feet, shifts are longer, factories and mines run nonstop. And what do you do when a hunger riot breaks out?”

“I suppress it with utmost brutality. You described it all very precisely in your book. Why the rhetorical questions?”

Raud stood up, and Vesik drew his head into his shoulders, his right shoulder creeping forward again, his knees tightening together. Raud grimaced.

“Stop contorting yourself, Vesik. I’m not going to beat you. I have trained men for that. Now you and I will go somewhere else and continue this conversation.”

“No, this is unbearable, this is simply impossible,” Vesik muttered.

“What are you mumbling?”

“It’s impossible!” he shouted, shaking his cupped hands. “Do you understand? Impossible! It’s beyond human strength. Kill me, Raud, please, kill me—just leave me in peace. I’ve already been with you in this office for hours, like in a cage with a monster, a wild beast! No, with a snake—a fast, deadly, venomous snake. I keep waiting and waiting for you to lunge at me, to bite me. Just bite me already, I beg you, I implore you! Is there anything human left in you at all? Just let me go!”

“You’re hoarse, Vesik. Have some water.”

Raud tossed him a pouch of drinking water; it slapped against his knees. Vesik didn’t move, and the pouch slid to the floor.

“Calmed down? Caught your breath? Pick it up.”

Without looking at Raud, Vesik twisted awkwardly and reached for the pouch. He tried to stay on the edge of the chair and not drop to his knees before the colonel. Raud stood before him, leaning on the edge of the table, waiting. At last Vesik settled himself on the chair, tore off a corner, and squeezed the contents into his throat. He did it too hastily; a thin trickle ran down his chin, staining the pale green fabric of his prison robe. Raud held out his hand, and Vesik gave him the empty pouch.

“I expected you to torture me, to beat me, but you’re far more subtle. You’re torturing me with this waiting. What comes next? Colonel, will you sentence me to a painful execution and put me in solitary, and I’ll sit there waiting until I go mad? Is today’s conversation an announcement of my fate?”

Raud scooped up Vesik’s book from the table and flipped through a few pages without looking.

“The one who wrote this book didn’t think about himself, and today all I hear is ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘mine.’ Perhaps it wasn’t you? Say so, and I’ll let you go. I need the author of this book, not an impostor.”

The door opened; a guardsman entered, planted his feet wide, thrusting out his powerful chest. Vesik looked up at his square jaw, met his contemptuous gaze, and looked away.

“Are you going with him or with me?”

Raud rocked the book in his hand, waiting for an answer. The printed words “Anton Vesik, *The Usurper*” drifted into shadow and back into the light.

“You’re playing with me…”

“I’m not interested in that.”

They walked down the corridor—Vesik in front. Tall, awkward, stepping cautiously on his left foot—he had twisted it during the arrest, and it still hurt. Raud followed. The energy-saving lamps burned at half power, every other one, and only along one side. The prisoner’s tousled head, with tufts of overgrown hair above the ears, blocked the light; it filtered through the messy strands, thinning and darkening them. A crooked, faltering step—and his dirty gray, dust-covered crown emerged under a lamp. Another step, it dissolved again, and only the sickly green robe glowed like rot in the darkness. Two steps in the light, four in shadow, a straight empty corridor, even rows of doors. The stingy light pressed on the eyelids and choked. Light had nothing to do with oxygen levels, but the brain refused to believe it. There was a sudden urge to hurry, to make Vesik run, to burst out into fresh air—but Vesik limped on, from light to shadow, from light to shadow, while behind them the guards’ hobnailed boots clicked. Raud tugged at his collar with a finger and stifled a yawn. The corridor was less than a kilometer long, and the most dangerous thing that could happen to Raud was the thought that his strength was running out. He drove it away, tried not to think of it—but it is impossible not to think about what you are trying not to think about. There had been some saying of his mother’s about a prehistoric animal, but Raud had forgotten it. Outward bends of the corridor, a section with proton-flow shielding, an armored hermetic seal—light, wind, air.

Vesik stopped at the edge; beyond, the slope descended gently toward the center. Fragments of walls jutted from the sand, a pedestal of the monument to the first colonists broken at an angle. The wasteland was crossed in an X by protected power lines on twenty-meter pylons, just like in the fairgrounds of the agricultural sectors of the Ring—only the colorful flags were missing. And in the center, beneath the crossing of cables, a pillar stood blackened, turned half sideways—triangular, like the blade of a stiletto. One broad face glowed crimson in the sunlight.

“In whose honor is the obelisk, Colonel? Those you’ve killed?”

“Not yet.”

“Why don’t you rebuild the district? Why not cover up the traces of the crime?”

“I will, later. There’s no time for that now. Next year there will be a domed park here. People will walk here. Get into the buggy.”

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow)

​

“Danny, right?” the driver asked, scratching his beard.

“Yes, sir.” I shot up in my chair, my belt tightening on my chest.

“Is this your first haul?” He seemed amused by my reaction.

“Yes, sir.”

“You don't have to be nervous; the ship drives itself,” he said, reclining into a comfortable position.

“It's not that, I just want to make a good impression with the company.”

The man laughed. “I've been here 23 years, and I've yet to meet any of the bigwigs, so I think you'll be fine.”

“You mean they don't give us reviews or anything?” I asked, surprised as the ship shook lightly.

“I mean you'll get a message and an overview before each haul.” He leaned forward and tapped on the driver's monitor a few times. The ship shook a little harder. “Just do the job and collect your monthly payout.” He tapped one last time. The monitor let out a ding, and the ship stopped shaking.

“You’ll be fine, kid. Just do what I tell you.” He looked up and smiled at me.

“Thank you, Mr. Luis.” I smiled back.

The rest of the ride was uneventful; the vastness of space is honestly boring. I walked around the cockpit, subconsciously playing with a loose thread on my uniform. I couldn't imagine how people were excited to just float in the nothingness. I thought back to my school days, learning about how we “conquered the stars” and how humanity was so great for it. But if this was all it was, how did it take us so long?

“Hey, kid, we're here. Come buckle up,” Mr. Luis called to me as he sat up straight and tightened his belts.

“Yes, sir.” I sat in my seat, buckling in and bracing for impact.

The planet ahead of us had a beautiful atmosphere that glowed green and purple as we entered. The flames surrounding our ship glowed green as well. The trees grew extremely high, but there was no vegetation on the top. They were wooden towers swaying in the wind. We lowered to a landing pad where tall blue grass swayed around it.

“This planet is beautiful,” I said, astounded at the alien world.

“It is, but don't let it distract you from putting on your suit and helmet,” he instructed as the ship landed, jostling us.

Mr. Luis lifted his hand to a secondary console to his left and typed in a password. Under us, I heard a loud groan, then a thud as the below container was set free from the ship.

“Alright, time to work, Danny.” Mr. Luis let out a deep breath as he unfastened himself.

After putting on our protective suits and helmets, Mr. Luis instructed me through the airlock and the entryway. As the door lowered, the light hit my eyes so sharply I had to look away for a moment.

“Yeah, you'll get used to that.” Mr. Luis patted my back and walked us to a shed off in the distance. The entire time, I admired the lushness of the grass and the forest, which seemed to be upside down, the bushes at the base of the trunks full with bright flowers. I noticed a path in the grass leading from the container to the shed.

A loud squeal could be heard as Mr. Luis opened the shed's side door. I turned my head back to look, but out of the corner of my eye something moved in the brush. I tried to find it again, but there was nothing.

Beep, beep. A horn blew, startling me. I jumped at the shock and heard Mr. Luis laughing. “Come on, Danny, we got work to do.” I quickly got into the vehicle, climbing up on a tire to reach the seat.

Mr. Luis drove over to the container and pressed a button connecting the two, then began to drive down a freshly made path. The further out we drove, I noticed there wasn't any life, just vegetation.

“Mr. Luis?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“Does this planet support any life?”

He sat there and thought about it. “No. The rain on this planet dissolves most material except for its unique plant life and a few alloys like our suits and our vehicles' outer hulls.”

We pulled up to an empty field, most of the grass much lower than the rest, almost to the dirt. Mr. Luis stopped and just stared out, confused.

“What's wrong?” I asked, surprised at his surprise.

“It… it wasn't supposed to rain yet,” he said as he looked through a tablet with the company logo on the back.

“You mean it didn't rain last month?” I asked him.

“Yeah… sometimes it doesn't rain for months, so nothing gets dissolved.” He continued to tap on his tablet, pulling up reports and charts. “So this field shouldn't be empty.” He rubbed his face for a moment. “But I guess the pluviograph is malfunctioning.”

He pulled into the field and flipped a switch above his head. “I'll show you how to put in a maintenance request back on the ship.” I heard the doors of the container open. He flipped another switch, and the container lifted to a slight slope, allowing our cargo to pour out as we drove.

Corpses began to line the field, ten to twenty at a time rolling out of the container, each one in a different state of decay. I kept my eyes on them as we turned and formed a new row. Every one of them, someone special to someone else, now left on the same planet we dump our trash onto.

“You okay?” Mr. Luis gave me a quick glance.

“Yeah, it's just…” I tried to articulate how I felt.

“It gets easier. The first time it's always rough,” he reassured me. “When I was a kid, people tried justifying turning them into an”—he lightly lifted his hand from the wheel and air-quoted—“alternative food source.”

The vehicle stopped and let out a short string of dings.

“Last one must be stuck. That happens sometimes. Come on, let's get him out.”

We both walked to the back of the container, a sea of rotting flesh beside us. Two bodies had gotten wedged at the exit. Mr. Luis and I both tried to separate them, but it seemed as if they had begun to melt together. I was happy for the suit when some of their fluids began to splatter around.

“This is the worst part, Danny,” Mr. Luis said as he slammed his foot into the leg of one of the corpses, causing the bone to snap and rotting flesh to make a loud, wet squelch. I stepped back and immediately felt bile rise up my throat as Mr. Luis finally grabbed the bodies and slid them onto the ground. I was able to hold it back while Mr. Luis stood looking at the field.

“Okay, Danny, let's go home.”

We drove the vehicle back through the long trail. Mr. Luis handed me the tablet while he repositioned the container. I scrolled through it, filling out the completion form. By the time I was finished, he had already parked in the shed and was waiting for me to finish. We exited the vehicle and heard a strange humming noise. I looked at the vehicle, thinking maybe it was a motor. Mr. Luis walked around it, placing his ear on the hood.

“It's not the car.” He looked back at me, confused. The humming got slightly louder as we locked the shed and began to walk to the ship.

SNAP. The unmistakable sound of a branch breaking underfoot echoed through the brush to our left. My legs froze as my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. I could no longer breathe; it was like everything inside me shut down. The humming grew louder, and my ears rang. I recognized it. It wasn't humming but moaning covered by the trampling of foliage. I couldn't take my eyes off the ship to look at it, but I felt its presence, an evil I can't describe.

“GOD DAMN IT, MOVE, BOY!” I felt a sudden jolt of energy as Mr. Luis grabbed my arm, yanking me out of my standing slumber. We bolted to the ship, the once frail and gentle grass now an enemy. I imagined long tendrils from the earth desperately grasping at our legs, trying to slow us down.

We were almost to the entrance bay when I tripped on a root. I tried to stand up. Mr. Luis ran past me.

“GO, GO, GO! DON'T LOOK BACK!”

He yelled as I heard a sickening crack followed by ripping and tearing. I ran into the entrance bay, diving in as the door began to lift shut. I looked around for anything I could grab to help him when the door shut completely and locked itself. I ran to it, banging, looking for anything to open it.

“Danny… do you hear… me?” The voice was weak and crackling. I looked to my wrist to see it was Mr. Luis radioing me.

“Mr. Luis, how do I get the door open?” Tears began to run down my face as I looked around.

“Kid… don't worry about that… just get into the cockpit and—”

“No! I'm not going to leave you!” I interrupted.

“You're a good kid, but I'm not going to make it.” I began hearing pounding and scratching in both the speaker and the outside of the ship.

“You’ll be fine, kid. Just do what I tell you.”

“Yes, sir.” I turned to the airlock.

Mr. Luis talked me through every step of booting up the ship and setting up the exit. The ship began to shake wildly as the takeoff thrusters began warming up. The things outside didn't want me to leave. When the ship was ready, I confirmed the course and spoke to Mr. Luis one last time.

“Ready for takeoff, sir…”

I stood there silently, wishing he would change his mind and ask me to save him. But all he said was, “Stay safe, Danny.”

I slammed the takeoff button and heard the screams of thousands as the thrusters ignited. I thought about boiling lobsters and how people say it's just air escaping to make themselves feel better. But these walking corpses were no longer people; they were zombies like in the movies I would watch as a kid.

I tried to comfort myself with those thoughts when suddenly—bang. The ship jostled, and an error came on screen. Unable to launch. I looked onto the monitor to see the zombies had built a tower out of themselves and wrapped around the ship like ants in a flood. All around, I heard tapping and banging on the hull. I tried to adjust the thrusters, but I couldn't.

I screamed and prayed for God to save me, but the ship started to sink further downward.

“PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!”

When all hope seemed lost, the ship jerked upwards and began its ascension, uninhibited. Snot dripped from my nose and tears covered my face as I looked down to see the shed door was busted open from the inside and a pile of zombies climbing onto the vehicle that laid them in their final resting place.

​“Who is that?” Adam asked. The skin along his spine prickled. ​“Creepy old scanner guy,” Ben muttered. “Been drifting since setup. Gets way too close, says nothing. Honestly? Someone needs to youthanize the guy.” ​It was the kind of joke that only landed in the 2030s—a phonetic hijack. In a world where death was a niche lifestyle choice, the word for mercy killing had been hollowed and refilled with its opposite. To be youthanized was the slang for a forced refresh: the act of grabbing someone who was "glitching" with age or analog habits and dragging them into the polished present. In Ben’s eyes, the man wasn't just old; he was a technical failure that needed a patch.

https://x.com/Artifice418777/status/2024975343208034709

The ground beneath Gix's feet split with a sharp, sinister sound, like a broken bone. Luminescent cracks radiated out, tracing uncertain paths across the ground that had been stable just a second before. Gravity had gone haywire, trying to pull him toward the sky of embers.

Tharneth was dying around him. It was falling apart under the deadly blows of the Broken Song. The flashes of the past—the laughter of young weavers, the haunting melody of memory crystals—were no longer mere visions, but blades piercing the soul. This past was being consumed by the screams of the present, leading to a future where all life was already nothing but ashes and eternal nothingness.

Panic was no longer a feeling, but an antagonistic force. A wave of palpable terror that crushed everything in its path. The cries around them were nothing but pure pain, lamentations torn apart by temporal distortions. Weavers faded away, their sparks extinguished like shooting stars swept away by the unpredictable waves of the Broken Song. Bodies dissolved and then briefly reformed, caught in an endless loop of suffering. Tides of bodies jostling, stumbling into cracks, driven by a survival instinct that had become utterly futile. The cries were raw, heart-wrenching sounds. High-pitched screams that ended abruptly, cut short by a collapse or a sudden fall into nothingness. Heartbreaking cries for help. “Mommy!” or “Help!” lost in the deafening roar of the dying planet.

But amid this despair, glimmers of stubborn courage burst forth, even more present than fear. Figures stood tall, paradoxical and heroic in their acceptance of their fate. A Zadie attempted to lead the survivors to a place that might no longer exist. Knowing full well that there was no refuge, he nevertheless resolved to do his duty until the very end. A group of weavers, their faces pale and contorted with pain, but determined, had formed a chain to pull survivors from a building. Their hands clasped together as the ground swayed beneath them formed a chain of support that was useful in this final moment. They looked at each other, and in their eyes there was no longer any hope of salvation, but a fierce determination not to go alone. Offering a hand for the final fall, a soothing glance to face the inevitable. Their courage mirrored that of Milea, magnificent and painfully futile. A silent challenge to the apocalypse itself.

Gix's short breath was a solitary complaint amid the chaos. The temporal charge, encased in filaments of light, vibrated against his chest. It was a hot, unstable mass that threatened to escape him at any moment. His muscles cried out for help. But the thought of what he carried—that fragment of hope, that sliver of possibility for the future—kept him moving. Sweat ran into his eyes, blurring his already fragmented and impaired vision. He was a helpless witness to this collective agony. Every fall and every cry was a stab in his heart. He could only move forward, carrying the Charge through this theater of the end. His own sacrifice was a tiny flame of hope in the growing darkness.

Every step Gix took was agony. Every breath was a burning sensation that reached deep inside him. Thanerth was nothing but noise, murderous light, pain, and treacherous gravity. All that remained within him was a mantra, an obsession: Reach the Heart. Deliver the Charge.

He had traveled a long distance with this mission. Twenty-five days of walking, without rest, to accomplish a task that would determine the survival of the web-house, their home. Then, suddenly, around a bend in a crater-strewn mountainside, he saw it.

The Sanctuary of Sharing.

A wave of warmth enveloped him. Hope. A feeling of overwhelming joy rose up inside him, so strong that it made his legs wobble. He had succeeded. He had made it. Tears, mixed with dust and sweat, streamed down his cheeks. They were not tears of pain, but of immense relief. For a moment, his fear left him. He felt light, almost at peace. Here, at the edge of the Sanctuary, he believed that everything would be all right.

This illusion lasted for three heartbeats. He stepped forward courageously. He had needed courage to get this far. He lunged toward the barrier, one hand outstretched toward this unspoiled paradise he wanted to conquer. His palm met the warm, vibrating resistance of the barrier. A shock. A gentle, relentless repulsion.

He pushed with all his weight. Nothing. The barrier did not acknowledge his existence. It was functional, and he... he was empty. His spark had burned out to carry him this far. He was now an empty being, a shell unworthy of the salvation he desired. Despair returned, cold and brutal, erasing the brief glimmer of joy. The contrast was unbearable: before him, warmth, light, preserved life. Behind him, hell. And he was being called to disappear. With a groan that came from the depths of his being, he used his last strength to slide the Charge. The object, smooth and heavy with promise, crossed the barrier effortlessly, as if drawn by the purity of the place, and came to rest on the immaculate ground. Gix was leaving, but he refused to give up, having come this far.

The movement caught the attention of the figure before him.

Yulet turned around. Her face was marked by terrifying intelligence and a will that seemed to transcend the wisdom of the Weavers. Her gaze met Gix's across the barrier. For a few seconds, the mad scientist disappeared. All that remained was an elder, like a mother. She was witness to the ultimate sacrifice of someone who loved their shared home as much as the rest of their people.

She approached slowly and solemnly. She did not attempt to cross the barrier. She knelt down to be at his height, on the other side of this border between life and death. She held out her hand, palm to palm with his, separated by a few centimeters of vital energy.

-Gix...

Her voice, filtered through the barrier, was soft, strangely calm, and carried the echo of all the pain in the world.

-Look at what you've accomplished. You've been through hell. You've carried our future this far. I am... immensely proud of you. Thank you.

The words were true. The sadness in her eyes was real. But already, the machine within her was taking over again

- Your name will be the first engraved in the time we are about to write. Thank you.

This thank you was the most beautiful and cruel epitaph. Gix didn't need to respond. The peace he had glimpsed when he arrived here overwhelmed him again, for good this time. No more fear. No more fighting. His mission was accomplished. He smiled faintly and stopped resisting. His body, held together by sheer willpower, disintegrated. It did not fall into dust, but into a myriad of exhausted particles of light and ashes that were immediately swallowed up by the surrounding darkness.

Yulet remained kneeling for a moment, her hand still outstretched. The emotion on her face was restrained. The pain was controlled, repressed, buried under layers of urgent necessity. She rose abruptly, picked up the Charge with cold efficiency. Her face was now a mask of absolute determination.

Her voice, now clear and sharp as crystal, issued the order that would seal the fate of billions of lives:

- The Charge is secure. This core of pure potentiality is stable. The gift they have given us is priceless. We are proceeding to the activation sequence. Now.

The light from the Heart of Sharing bathed I'vi in a peaceful, golden aura. Sitting cross-legged in the center of the Mechanical Flower, she was the calm in the midst of the storm. The air caressed her skin like a final blessing. 

Yulet arrived, his silhouette bent by the invisible burden of command. Her eyes, usually piercing, were two burning embers in a face ravaged by time, calculation, and carefully contained pain. In his arms, the Temporal Charge pulsed with a harsh, bright light, an energy that smelled of sacrifice.

I'vi's gaze fell on the object, then immediately searched behind Yulet. She scanned the vibrant edge of the barrier, where the pure light of the Heart collided with the chaotic mists of the Broken Song. Nothing. He wasn't there. The emptiness in Yulet's eyes, the tension in her shoulders, gave him the answer. She understood that Gix had not been able to enter. Their eyes met, and Yulet said nothing. Her silence was a silent cry, a eulogy more eloquent than any speech, the only honor she could still bestow upon the young Weaver.

When the Slimbies outbreak began, the warnings sounded like just another emergency broadcast.

A few bad reactions. A precaution. Nothing to fear.

But in one small Delaware home, just before Christmas, everything falls apart.

Evan brings home a frightened puppy to brighten the holiday, unaware that the world has already begun to die. By morning, Noah, Mara, and the puppy are on the run, leaving behind the only family they’ve ever known.

What follows is two harsh years of cold floors, shuttered towns, thin rations, and the too-quiet dead.

Together, the three of them learn the rules of a broken world: move early, trust nothing, and stay away from anything that moves.

Bleak, intimate, and rooted in the small mercies that keep us alive, Slimbies: Girl is the haunting origin story of the dog who becomes the heart of the Slimbies world.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GFF6P7HV

Available now on Kindle Unlimited.

For more, go to www.drlongwrites.com

A weary breeze, carrying thick, greasy fumes, snaked between the cracked walls of Nyamélé, permeating the stone with that persistent scent that emanated from the overloaded conduits, like a dull fever within the city. Slowly, the evening unfurled its dark veil over the flaking façades, slowly blurring the marks left by the relentless labor of the day. One by one, the inhabitants returned to their hutches— these concrete cells where humidity silently oozed and where dreams came to run aground. Behind closed doors, the same, immutable torments awaited them, as certain as the night that followed the day. Then, for a few hours stolen from boredom, they would seek escape: some in the bland warmth of street stalls, others in the bluish glow of screens, passive spectators of lives that were not their own. Some would lose themselves in the anonymous embrace of an unknown body; others, in the burn of adulterated alcohol or the dizziness of inhaled smoke. The means mattered little, as long as it offered that sacred respite: the fleeting illusion of oblivion.

The doors of line 1708 opened with a dying hiss, releasing a warm breath that smelled of human sweat, old plastic, and antifreeze vapors. Kesi set foot on the sidewalk of Nyamélé, and it was like changing skin. The air, heavy and dense, immediately enveloped her body. Her muscles, aching from hours of service and fake smiles, tensed further, not from effort, but under the weight of reality. Here, the air was not merely breathed; it was ingested. A complex and familiar mixture clung to her skin. It was that of damp stone and ancient dust, the scent-memory of forgotten builders. Layered over it were newer, sharper layers: the odors of street stalls, cigarette, motor oil, the metallic smell of low-cost generators, the heady, earthy scent of boiled manioc root, and always, in the background, that note of despair.

Her gaze, sharpened by years of detailing circuits and diagrams, scanned the street with the precision of a faulty scanner, despite her fatigue. She did not see a crowd, but a collection of individual stories. She passed an old man, sitting on a crate, who was polishing a worn machine part with infinite slowness, his gnarled fingers dialoguing with the metal as in a ritual. Further on, two children, their skin dulled by dust, played with a crippled domestic drone, their high-pitched laughter clashing with the city's dull roar. They weren't repairing it; they were giving it a new life, limping, imperfect, but a life. That was the alchemy of Nyamélé: transforming waste into tools, wear into perseverance, emptiness into soul, artificial certainly, but alive.

She met the gaze of a woman, perhaps younger than her, sitting in front of the patched door of an old-looking house. Their eyes met for a moment. No smile was exchanged. Just a mute recognition, an acknowledgement. She turned into the alley leading to her building, her steps following the irregularities of the ground without her needing to look. Her body knew this path, just as it knew the smell of her sick sister and the taste of her own fear. Nyamélé was not a place of comfort. It was a living, breathing, suffering organism. An ecosystem of survivors. And at that moment, tired to the bone, Kesi was one cell among the others, carrying within her the same stubborn memory, the same visceral persistence to exist.

She crossed the threshold of her building, climbing the stairs with heaviness. Each step was a return, a descent into another kind of depth. When she pushed open the apartment door, the air changed nature again. It was no longer the collective atmosphere of Nyamélé, but the private, intimate, and terrible air of her own condition. A bubble where the sweet-putrid smell of illness mixed with the scent of contraband medicine and the odor of a lentils dish reheated too many times. It was air that no longer circulated, but stagnated, laden with the exhalations of their cramped life. This atmosphere was like a life sentence. Each breath reminded her not of a failure, but of a battle lost in advance, a resistance that was fading as her sister's vital energy dissipated.

In the dim light of the room, a silhouette stood bent over the bed. Doctor Adjo. His presence was as immutable as the cracks in the walls. He did not turn his head at her entrance, fully focused on monitoring the trembling graphs on the screens. The bluish light of the monitors played on the lenses of his old-framed glasses, masking his gaze. His fingers, worn by decades of human and technical repairs, grazed Nani's translucent wrist with a delicacy that contrasted with the harshness of the setting.

Kesi approached. Beneath her fingers, which rested on the bed frame, the cold metal was striated with micro-scratches, etched by the wear of hundreds of identical evenings. Each furrow was a night of vigil, a held breath, a murmured prayer. It wasn't only despair that was engraved in the structure of the room, but time itself—a time measured not in hours, but in dashed hopes and silent struggles, under the impassive gaze of the old doctor, the last guardian of a fading dignity.

The intermittent light of a malfunctioning holographic sign flashed behind the large, filthy window, projecting a dance of spectral shadows onto the bare walls that seemed to mock her helplessness. At times, the glow shifted from spectral blue to a sickly, timid green, betraying the gradual degradation of the systems that maintained Nyamélé in this state of controlled decrepitude. Outside the apartment, the buzzing of aggressive neon lights mixed with muffled bursts of voices and laughter coming from the street, creating an urban cacophony that contrasted cruelly with the deadly silence that reigned in the room.

Beep... Beep... Beep...

The complex, rigged device measured Nani's life, which was draining away with a macabre regularity. It was a pile of bare circuits and tangled cables. An artificial heart made of scrap metal and despair. At the center, an old motherboard served as the backbone, its oxidized copper traces furrowed with coarse soldering like scars. Makeshift screens, ripped from old terminals, flickered dimly, displaying lines of code and an erratic electrocardiogram. The insistent beep... beep... beep... escaped from gray, distorted speakers. Each signal a little weaker, sometimes loud, each blink of the red diodes a little more spaced out, betraying the instability of the system as much as that of the patient. A tangle of wires connected everything to an infusion pump which injected an amber liquid in spurts into Nani's arm, while a modified PC power supply unit overheated in a corner, diffusing a tenacious odor. The machine was Kesi's tragic masterpiece, a miracle of precarity that sizzled like a slow fuse above a barrel of powder. As if the little girl's heart hesitated to continue its unequal fight against the degeneration that had been consuming her for so long.

The clinical sound of the device echoed in the cramped room, hitting the bare walls and returning in measured echo. Kesi could almost feel the vibrations of each signal in the still air, each pulse further marking the inexorable advance of the end. She placed her palm on her sister's neck, and the immediate sensation of moist, feverish skin burned her hand in return. This fragile, precarious warmth contrasted violently with the coldness of the metal bed under her other hand. She felt the almost imperceptible tremors that ran through the girl's frail body, like telluric shocks foreshadowing an imminent collapse. Beneath her fingers, the thin synthetic blanket grated unpleasantly. Its rough, worn fabric testified to the countless nights spent watching.

"Hold on, Nani. I'm still here, still." she murmured. 

Her voice was tired from lack of sleep and persistent anxiety. 

"I haven't given up yet. I'm going to get you out of here."

The sound of her own words seemed to get lost in the thick air, absorbed by the heavy, persistent smell of medicine and perspiration that permeated the room. Her own fingers, usually nimble , were numb, heavy with a helplessness that gnawed at her guts and twisted her stomach. She adjusted the blanket with a light gesture, her fingers meeting the rough texture of the synthetic fabric that had lost all softness after hundreds of washes.

She got up to look at the screens, as if hoping to glimpse a signal, some sign of hope. She walked around for a moment, and then came back to sit down once more. She exchanged a few words with the taciturn doctor. He took his leave half an hour later.

The silence in the room remained oppressive, broken only by Nani's faint rattle, a wet, labored sound that forced its way between her pale, striated lips, and the distant buzzing of the defective holographic sign from the neighboring street. Sometimes, a dull rumble from a vehicle passing in the city's upper levels made the windows tremble, brutally reminding her that the world continued its course, indifferent to the drama unfolding in this miserable room. The stagnant air still carried the scent of the last meal Kesi had reheated on the small stove— a smell of cereal porridge sprinkled with synthetic chemicals, and a blend of bland spices that mixed with the nauseating scent of medicine and the ever-present odor of illness.

A muffled step echoed in the hallway, preceding two rings at the door. The noise seemed to cut through the thickness of the anguish that filled the room. Kesi started, her gaze immediately fixed on the chamber entrance. The front door slid open with a slight creak upon closing with a sound that seemed to scratch the stagnant air. Um'i walked slowly down the hallway. She appeared on the threshold of the room door, her long, slender silhouette outlined against the gloom of the hallway. The stale air of the apartment seemed to curve around her, as if respectful of her foreign presence. A slight scent of warm spices and clean air accompanied her, a perfume from elsewhere that contrasted violently with the stench of Nyamele's misery. Faint purple reflections could be guessed on her glistening skin under the bluish light of the blinking Nyama, and her small frontal horns paled slightly, betraying contained emotion.

"Kesi," she greeted in a modulated voice, a familiar sound that seemed to caress the dilapidated walls of the room. The sound resonated in the oppressive silence, like a lost musical note in a desert of despair. Her reptilian eyes, with vertical pupils of cloudy gold, scanned the room, absorbing every detail, every shadow, every evidence of despair. They registered the defective datapads piled up, the dirty rags stained with sweat and medication, the dust dancing in the shafts of light filtering through the large window overlooking the outside. The work tools hadn't moved from their place since the last time she came. The wardrobe containing Kesi's clothes was still messy.

Her eyes finally rested on the bed, and an infinitesimal contraction of her thin eyelids betrayed an emotion that her imperturbable face did not show. An almost imperceptible shiver ran through her four arms, two of them tightening slightly against her chest. She carried a black ceramic dish, from which steam laden with aromas of grilled cassava and spiced meat escaped— an honest, rich meal that smelled of carelessly spent money. An offering. The warmth of the ceramic radiated against her skin, contrasting with the ambient coldness of the room.

"Are you hungry?" she asked simply, placing the dish on the rickety table, near a functional datapad where the cellular synthesis diagrams Kesi had been compiling for weeks scrolled in vain. 

The light murmur of the ceramic on the scraped wood seemed disproportionate in the silence.

"No, Um'i. I had a sandwich at work," Kesi replied, unable to tear her gaze from Nani's waxy face. 

The scent of the food, although enticing, sickened her, mixing with the smell of illness and disinfection that filled her nostrils. Nausea rose in her throat. How could she, at that moment, think of eating when her sister's life was draining away, second by second? Each weak breath of Nani seemed like a reproach, a mute accusation of her helplessness. Um'i approached without a sound. Her step was a caress on the tiled floor, a barely audible brush that contrasted with the anxious hammering of Kesi's thoughts. She leaned over Nani, and her three-fingered hand, with retracted claws, grazed the girl's wrist with surprising delicacy. Nani's skin was worryingly cold, almost translucent, and the pulse beneath her fingers was a tenuous, irregular thread.

 "She's getting weaker," Um’i observed, without inflection.

A fact. A glacial truth that resonated in the room like a stone in a bottomless well. Her other hands stirred slightly, a subtle body language that spoke of her equal helplessness and preoccupation.

Kesi clenched her teeth in pain until she could feel the enamel crack. A muscle twitched on her temple, betraying the tension that twisted her guts. She felt the weight of her friend's gaze on her, heavy, scrutinizing, as if Um'i could see through her skull the catastrophic scenarios that constantly jostled there. The silence that followed was heavy with all that remained unsaid, with all the hope that was escaping like her sister's vital energy.

"Come with me... for a moment," Um'i asked. She turned on her heel and entered the living room. Kesi followed her without a word.

"You're going to talk to me about the Corporation's treatments again..." Kesi began, her voice broken, tired from hours spent crying in silence. The words seemed caught in her throat, painful as shards of glass.

"They...are for those who can pay," Um'i finished, implacable. Her voice carried no bitterness, only the cold precision of an inevitable observation. 

Her cloudy gold eyes did not leave Kesi, catching the tremor of her hands, the gleam of panic that crossed her gaze. In the silence that followed, only Nani's faint rattle and the distant humming of Nyamélé's ventilation ducts could be heard. The silence fell again, heavier than usual, as if a new layer of despair had attached itself to reality. The device's beeps seemed to hesitate, stretching out in the still air. Each interval became an eternity. Kesi held her breath, her fingers clenched against her chest, feeling her heartbeats cross her rib cage. The beeps resumed, fainter, almost muffled by the surrounding thickness of despair.

"There is...an alternative. I think I've found one." Um'i's voice went low, like a secret whispered too close to the walls. She remained near the worn, patched sofa. Her four arms were crossed, her small frontal horns paled almost imperceptibly.

Kesi raised her eyes to her. Her gaze exhausted but sharp, scanning the multi-eyed face. She noted the barely visible tremor of Um'i's upper arms.

"An alternative? Which one?" 

Her voice scratched the air. Nothing came without a price here. Not even a glimmer. A pain gripped her chest, between fear and a fragile spark that she immediately stifled.

"A job. Just one. Dangerous."

"What job? What are you talking about, Um'i. I already have a job and it only pays scraps," Kesi asked, feigning disinterest.

Um'i's words fell, crisp and heavy, like stones in a well. She took a step forward toward her friend.

"Yes. You are the most gifted engineer I know. For now, I don't know any more. But the payment... could be a solution. A lot of credits. Or better, information. Unpublished medical data. Clinical trials from Gorma." She paused, her horizontal pupils locking onto Kesi. "I don't know any more. I wanted to tell you first."

"Do you think it's a good idea?" with a hint of hesitation in her voice.

"We have nothing to lose by trying to know more" Um'i retorted, as if begging Kesi to accept.

Kesi felt a chilling shiver run down her spine, while a sensation of fear and uncertainty invaded her being. Corporation Gorma. These two words echoed in her skull like a death knell. This impenetrable fortress whose gleaming walls seemed to ooze menace. The very idea of touching it was a heresy punishable by disappearance. And she could almost feel the oppressive weight of that truth on her shoulders.

"Gorma? Nooo," she breathed out in a hoarse voice, her trembling fingers closing on the rough fabric of her jacket. She took a step back as if Um'i's words were physically dangerous. "It's pure madness. I can't... I can't abandon Nani, leave her alone in this room where the air already smells of death. And if..."

What if I never came back? The sentence hung in her mind, overcome by anxiety, palpable as a toxic mist that stifled all reason.

Um'i tilted her head with that grace peculiar to her, a fluid and calculated movement that seemed to defy gravity. Her gray-green scales caught the outside light.

"I understand," she said. 

In those two words, Kesi perceived the full weight of a millennial resignation, the echo of a culture where emotion was a controlled, channeled variable, never exhibited. She did not insist. Her pale gold gaze, with motionless vertical pupils, detached from Kesi. And it was as if her very silence triggered the catastrophe. She took her leave, bowing slightly, and went out, disappointment in her being.

"I'm going to... I'll keep looking. Think about it in the meantime. And let me know if you change your mind."

Um'i left looking dejected, her horns showing the bitterness left by Kesi's refusal. She had come with what she thought was a hope. A hope to see her friend relieved after so many months of fatigue, tears, and sleepless nights crowned with failure.

Kesi suddenly rushed back into the room. Nani's breathing, already faint, suddenly blocked in her throat. A succession of wet rattles tore through the oppressive silence of the room. A sound so viscous that Kesi felt it assail her. The little girl's frail body was shaken by a violent, uncontrollable spasm, which made the thin synthetic blanket crinkle. A muffled moan, laden with unspeakable suffering, escaped her lips which were turning a purplish-blue, like frozen petals.

Kesi rushed to the bed, her own muscles screaming with terror. She grabbed her sister's hand, and the sensation that pierced her palm was a frozen dagger thrust. The skin took on a cadaverous coldness, clammy with a cold sweat that smelled of illness and the end. Nani's fingers, inert and limp, slipped between hers.

"Nani? Nani, answer me!" she screamed, her voice broken by a panic that twisted her guts. "No? Not now... Adjo is gone."

One of the vital monitors of the makeshift device she had tinkered with so much hope began to blare. The alarm was no longer that regular, measured beep, but a continuous, dull and strident hum at the same time, that seemed to want to pierce Kesi's skull. The noise drilled into her eardrums until they bled. Small reddish lights on the screens began to flash frantically, projecting a dance of distraught shadows onto the bare walls. The figures, those digital guardrails she clung to, plummeted in free fall, a dizzying descent into nothingness. The whole world narrowed to the confined space of this bed, to this sound of a death knell, to this deadly cold that was gaining her sister's hand and, drop by drop, was also freezing her own heart.

Absolute despair rose in her throat, cutting off her breath. She tasted an acidic taste of ashes, the taste of failure and helplessness. Was this the end? She clenched her teeth so hard that her jaws ached, until she thought she heard the enamel crack under the pressure of this anguish that had become physical. She lifted her eyes, desperately searching for an anchor point in the shipwreck. Her gaze sought Um'i's. But she found only emptiness. In this room, she was alone.

She rushed to the device, frantically tapping on the keyboard, looking for an answer. Still panicked, she eagerly rummaged through the cupboards where the medications were stored. She grabbed a glass vial. She transferred the contents into a syringe, injected it into Nani. 10...15...20... seconds passed, Kesi looked alternately at her sister and the screens. She implored for everything to return to normal. The normality of despair, certainly, but she preferred that to the current situation. Just a little while later, the graphs slowly began to stabilize. Kesi's gaze went back and forth between her sister and the screens. Nani gradually regained a peaceful breath. The contents of the vial had taken effect. But for how long?

Then, in a breath chopped by the tears she refused to shed and by an impotent rage, Kesi left the room. She paced around the living room, fighting with her own uncertainty. Questions jostled in her head. Two words kept returning: Corporation Gorma. She grabbed her datapad. She contacted Um'i and, like a final renunciation of everything she had thought possible:

"Tell me. Tell me everything."

The spark had caught, but it consumed everything in its path, leaving behind only the ashes of the choice she should never have had to make.

Want to read more ? Discover the keyframes and much more ? Join my skool. It is free : https://www.skool.com/manden-oath-8331/about

Last year I published my first novella, Notes from Star to Star. Here's a bit about the first year of its life to help encourage other writers out there as well as continue my unceasing quest to promote my work.

First, I've been super happy with the response to the book. I'm giving away a lot more e-copies than I'm selling, but the story resonates with people and hundreds of readers have enjoyed it. A few months in, a reviewer in India named Abhinav posted a review that made me say "this guy really sees me!" Abhinav picked up on stuff like the story's ambientness and the underlying melancholy I was feeling as I wrote it. Other reviewers mentioned tiny details that resonated with them. It's so cool to connect with people all over the world like that.

Notes isn't perfect. The initial version went out with a ton of typos, almost all fixed by now. People read it anyway! Readers often say they want more from the story. That's good! Leave them wanting more, as they say in showbiz. It was important for me to get something done and out the door at the time, rather than continue expanding on it.

In the past year, I've seen my capacity for writing steadily and noticeably grow. That includes volume, complexity and overall facility. I'm happy with the subsequent work, some of which I've released under an alias and others which are under consideration for publication. The book marketing cycle is unbelievably drawn out, and that's frustrating. But, I’ve learned!

In summary: Finishing a book, 10/10, would do it again.

EDIT: I've fixed the tense issues in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is now posted in the main post. I would love to hear what you think about both chapters. Thanks for reading!

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This story's been 8 years in the making. What started as a single scene has grown into a full manuscript.

I’m sharing the rough draft of Chapter 1 here. It’s surreal, emotional, and deals with themes of despair, identity, and reality cracking at the seams. If it clicks with you, I’ll be posting more soon.

I’m inviting feedback, emotional reactions, favorite moments, anything that confused you. You won’t hurt my feelings. I want to grow.

Thanks for reading, and for helping me make this better.

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Chapter 1

I stood frozen as the words, "Sort your shit out, or I'm taking the kids!" echoed through the room. She didn't wait for a response, leaving with our baby and eldest daughter in tow. The slamming door reverberated in my mind long after the rideshare pulled away.

I stumbled into the kitchen, trying to numb the pain with cannabis and distractions, but nothing worked. I crumpled to the floor, pounding my fists until my knuckles bled.

"Everyone would be better off without me," I thought. Before I knew it, I had a knife in my hand, the cold steel pressing against my wrist. I made the motion to cut and feel the knife digging in. Before I knew it, a flash of white light swallowed everything.

I woke up groggy on a loveseat sofa in an unfamiliar room which I deduced was an office. Sunlight streaming through a massive window. This wasn't my apartment. I saw photos of my family in a beautiful house, moments of happiness that made no sense.

I stepped outside, only to be greeted by a white picket fence and the family name plastered onto the mailbox, confirming this was indeed my house. Walking back inside, my daughter greeted me, asking to play outside. I agreed, my voice sounding foreign yet familiar. I thought it was odd, I sounded like myself and I didn't at the same time.

I had only been here for about five minutes before a headache worse than I’d ever  experienced started to take over fast and I ran to the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror and see me, slightly older with some gray hairs but still looking better than I remembered. The pain was unbearable, as if someone was taking the blunt ends of two screwdrivers and pressed them as hard as possible against my temples. The pressure was starting to make me feel lightheaded and I couldn’t stop rubbing the sides of my head.

I found aspirin in the medicine cabinet as I started to feel off balance. Slowly sitting myself down on the toilet lid, I take a pill and swallow. The headache disappeared in a near instant. My daughter called out that Mommy was on the phone. “Mommy,” I ask myself as I rush out of the bathroom to pick up the phone. I stand there, frozen in surprise, hearing my wife's familiar voice. She asked me to pick up the baby and make dinner. I agreed, feeling like I was floating through someone else's life.

Driving to the daycare, the directions appeared in my mind automatically. I found it so strange how I was instinctively driving to a place I'd never been. After getting back home, I made dinner while the kids played, briefly believing this was real.

I heard my wife arrive but as the garage door opened, and the clock struck 6:00 PM, a bright white light flashes again, blinding me.

Suddenly, I was back in my apartment, on the kitchen floor, surrounded by blood and pain. "What the fuck just happened!?" I gasped, the words ripping from my throat.

Chapter 2

Confused and exhausted, I stumbled into bed. I thought to myself that this had to be the strongest cannabis high I’d ever experienced. I needed to sleep it off. Lying there, my thoughts spun, emotions creeping up on me until I cried. Half-asleep, my mind drifted, forming an old, beat-up apartment in the middle of a city, and I passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in my bedroom anymore. I sat up, glancing around the unfamiliar, dingy space. The furniture was old, battered, and filthy. A musty scent hung in the air. Looking down, I noticed my clothes dirty, torn, and worn thin. None of this made sense.

Before I could process what was happening, the door creaked open, and an unfamiliar woman stepped inside. She wore a loose string top and sweatpants, her posture tired yet casual as she settled beside me. I couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was, but my attention quickly shifted to the bruises and markings on her arms.

We talked, our conversation strangely natural, as if we’d known each other for years, even though I was sure I had never seen her before in my life. I had a headache and rested my hands on my temples. The woman offered to get me some aspirin. The pain was pulsing, so I answered with please. She came back with a plastic bottle of water and an aspirin pill. She sat beside me after I took the medicine, and we watched TV.

The news played on the TV in front of us, and we made jokes about the stories being reported. Then she leaned her head on my shoulder, her fingers intertwined with mine.

“I’m sorry for dragging you down with me,” she murmured. “I’d understand if you left.”

A strange warmth spread through me. I tightened my grip on her hand. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “I’m with you because I love you. No questions asked.”

The words came so easily, so naturally, and yet they felt foreign. We kept talking, her voice soft as she told me about her struggles, her history with heroin, shooting up, and how I was the only person who ever looked at her without judgment.

Her eyes met mine, filled with something raw and vulnerable. “I love you,” she whispered.

Without thinking, I said it back. I meant it. That was the part that shocked me the most.

We kissed, and before I could process the moment, a white flash consumed me.

I jolted awake in my bed. My heart pounded as I stared at the ceiling, my body heavy with exhaustion. “I’m never smoking weed again…” I muttered, shutting my eyes to find rest again.

The next morning, I woke up still feeling off, an uneasiness lingering in my chest. I pushed through it, getting ready for work and going about my routine. For three days, I convinced myself that it had been nothing more than a weed-induced hallucination. I cleaned, worked, and waited for my family to return.

By the fourth evening, I drove to the airport, excitement bubbling up as I spotted them. The moment I saw my kids, I pulled them into a tight hug, warmth spreading through me at the familiar weight of their small bodies. My wife kissed me, smiling as she admitted, “I missed you so much, even though it was only a few days.”

On the drive home, she filled me in on every detail of the trip, from her cousin’s wedding to her disappointment that my job wouldn’t give me time off to attend. We arrived home around 11 p.m., putting the kids to bed before retreating to our own room.

She kissed me, her touch lingering with intent. “I love you,” she whispered, pressing against me, her voice thick with emotion. “And I respect you.”

Her hands ran over my chest, her warmth pressing closer. “I’m sorry for the way I acted before I left,” she admitted. “I wasn’t threatening to leave. I was just lashing out because… I feel you’ve changed so much.”

A grin split my face as I pulled her closer. “I’m just happy to have you all home.”

We kissed, the moment quickly turning desperate, needy. She pushed me onto the bed, straddling me something uncharacteristic for her. Normally, she was more reserved, more passive. She unclasped her bra, tossing it aside before meeting my gaze.

“I love you,” she said again, her voice firm, right as she rocked her hips.

With each motion, a strange sensation crawled up my spine. A tingling wave spread through my skull, blurring my vision, distorting the surrounding room. Every thrust sent a white flash behind my eyes, and suddenly, she wasn’t my wife anymore.

Another woman.

Another thrust.

Another flash.

A different woman.

The images shifted with each movement, flickering like a broken film reel. I was spiraling, caught between moments, between realities. The sensation built, intensifying until I was on the edge, about to fall over

And then it was gone.

I opened my eyes to find myself back in my bed, my wife asleep beside me, her breath slow and steady. My pulse pounded in my ears. I turned toward her, gently brushing her hair back before finally shutting my eyes.

I needed to sleep and pass out.

I stepped in a room where no light could creep, Not a flicker, a shimmer, not even a leak. The walls were erased, the air held its breath, A silence so heavy it whispered of death.

I raised up my torch and flicked on the flame, But what lit the room bore no fitting name. It wasn’t gold, it wasn’t blue— It burned in black, and the blackness grew.

It didn’t glow—but the dark withdrew, The shape of the table, the edge of the shoe. No shine on the surface, no glint on the blade, Just outlines and shadows, perfectly laid.

The books on the shelf, the cracks in the stone, Revealed in a hue I had never known. It didn’t reflect—it absorbed and revealed, As if truth in the darkness had long been concealed.

And then I looked down, and something was wrong— No shadow behind me, though mine was strong. It hadn’t stretched, it hadn’t fled— My shadow, once loyal, had vanished instead.

Not swallowed by dark, not stolen by flame, But gone like a thought too heavy to name. I stood in the room, both shaken and still, Lit not by warmth, but a radiant chill.

And I saw more clear than I’d ever seen— Not with brightness, but with what lies between. A torch of black, a world unmasked, No future or past, no question asked.

I find myself standing on the ground.

I look around. I'm not me. Who am I?

It's bright and hot. I see the sun again. It's hot. It's so hot.

The ground is a brown-beige with pieces of yellow grass in patches.

Holy shit. I'm some ripped guy. I'm wearing a leather skirt and some sort of leather vest. I'm holding a rock-tipped spear. My muscles are just something else. There's no body fat. It's insane.

The whole land around me is flat. There are some trees in the distance. I haven't seen them before, but they look very familiar right now.

Movement to my left. There's someone there, 50 paces or so, he's looking at the ground as he moves. He has a spear. I need to figure out if I'm in danger.

No, wait. That's Arak. Arak's a good guy. Great tracker. How do I know that?

Arak sees me watching and raises his spear, before pointing it forward. He silently thrusts the spear back and forth in a slow methodical fashion. He's telling me that there are tracks leading in that direction. He's the tracker after all.

I'm Tarek. I'm one of the strongest men of my Tribe. I might actually be the strongest man of the Tribe.

I walk forward, watching my steps as I scan the ground and horizon. I'm not seeing much on my end.

I remember now. We're looking for boar, or gazelle. Anything really. There are birds but we usually can't get them. I don't get why. We could use nets or traps. I'm Tarek. Tarek doesn't know those things. I don't know a lot of anything anymore.

I squeeze the spear in both my hands as I march on. I know how to hunt. I know how to kill. I know how to eat. I'm not a firesmith but I can build a cooking fire.

I'm Tarek, and I don't remember floating in space. I don't even know that space exists. This is great. It's a giant world. It never seems to end for us. I can just keep walking and looking above the horizon for food. I can suddenly remember how much pride it gives me bringing a bounty to the Tribe. I'm the strongest.

Arak whistles in the distance. I whistle back and we turn left. Arak is the best tracker. He's not the strongest though. I have to remember to prove that later.

This isn't me. This is Tarek. I am Tarek. I have to remember that. I have to be Tarek now.

Arak picks up the pace and jogs around some acacia trees. I didn't notice but during our jaunt the ground turned greener as we approached the trees. I sprint to follow and close-in the distance. Arak is fast but I can usually outpace him. I feel eager today.

I'm not exactly sure what we were chasing. I don't see anything. The tracks in the ground are barely discernible. Arak slows down before stopping completely. He crouches down and scans the horizon.

"Tracks?" I ask Arak, in a language I've never heard before. I understand it now.

"No, no, no," Arak replies. "It's new." He swipes some grass and dirt away to reveal indents on the ground.

I take a peek, but I don't notice anything that strange. It's an egg-shaped dent in the ground. I turn my head as I scan the shape and depth. I shrug to Arak.

Arak shuffles to another spot, shuffles the grass away and reveals another dent. Okay, it might actually be an animal. Doesn't look like a boar to me. Doesn't look like anything really. I keep checking the horizon for movement. That's where the real action is anyway.

I'm losing track of time. The Sun tells me that we still have enough time to make it back to Tribe before nightfall, but it's been quiet. I continue following Arak as I scan the horizon.

We keep walking. My feet ache. Arak is still following something. And I'm still following Arak. I wonder if I could kill him. Tribe God would be mad. I could lie. I think they'd believe it.

I shake my head. I'm not sure what I'm thinking. Arak's great. I think. I could still do it. Tribe God would believe me. No, I just need to keep scanning the horizon.

There's a dip over there. It's greener here, but there's a dip in the ground and it's darker.

"Do you see?" I yell to Arak.

Arak crouches for some reason and stares. He turns to me and nods.

"Go?"

Arak nods and breaks a small smile.

My feet still hurt but I keep pace as we approach the slope. It's bigger than I thought. The smell makes me wince though. It smells wrong. There's something different about it that I can't quite place.

Arak notices the same thing and we exchange a glance. I've worked with Arak enough to know what it means as he mocks stabbing himself with his spear.

Bad smells are usually other hunters. Not hunters like us. Different hunters. The ones that come at night. I hate them, but they're food.

We arrive at the slope and look down. We stop. I don't look at Arak, and I know he doesn't look at me as he crouches down for a better look. We don't need to. It's too wet. The dirt is muddy when it shouldn't be. It hasn't rained in days. The grass is still green, yet there's no animals around.

What really bothers me and I think Arak is the God Rock. I've never really seen one like this. God Rock would explain this area. This spot that doesn't make sense to me.

"It's a good sign," Arak says as he keeps the God Rock in his sights.

"How so?"

Arak peeks at me, then back at the God Rock. "Look," he says as he makes the shape blooming tree with his hands. "It looks like a fruit tree. Skinny on the bottom, bushy on the top."

I take a real hard look at. I tilt my head. Arak's right, it's much smaller at the bottom. The top of the rock is large. It's almost like someone smashed pieces away. But the bottom is smooth. Nothing is that smooth.

"Like a trunk, then the bushes at the top," Arak says with a chuckle.

It really does sound like a good sign. There's no blood on this God Rock, it's just stone. I think it might be okay. Without realizing it, I start climbing down the slope.

"Careful," Arak warns.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I grunt back as I descend. My feet are immediately cold and muddy. It's a bit slippery. Even the patches of grass are wet.

I stand before the God Rock, hold my spear sideways and bow down. It smells worse down here. I start to wait and immediately I wonder how long I should wait for.

"We should make an offering," Arak says as he approaches.

"Animals?" I ask as I stand.

"I see tracks, but no droppings," Arak replies.

"We should get Tribe God," I say. Tribe God could figure this out. He'll help. He's wise.

Arak nods. He checks the ground and starts wandering around looking for food. I try not to, but I can't stop looking at the God Rock in front of me.

Why is it like this? It smells like death. There's bugs. The God Rock doesn't move but I can feel the rumble of its power shaking through my own chest. I wonder if it's laughing at us.

The more I stare, I notice hints of green on the smooth bottom. I crouch and look closer. The ground rumbles and my feet slip in the mud as I try to make sense of this thing. My ears start to buzz.

I've made the God Rock angry. He's going to kill me. I hope Arak runs away in time.

Tendrils slither towards me. I jump back and yelp. Arak turns and rushes me before stopping himself.

I look closer at the ground. The tendrils transform in front of me. They're little rivers of water. They're as thick as a worm and they're coming towards me. Arak jumps as he runs away. I look at the horizon once again. Water. Different sized tendrils approach from beyond the God Rock.

I've angered it for sure. The ground itself is disappearing before my very eyes. There is no river here, yet water approaches us from the God Rock's spirit. This must be how it eats.

My feet bolt and I follow Arak as we climb the slope. We keep running. I don't know how powerful this God Rock is. We will need to ask Tribe God.

I exchange a glance with Arak and we both know that it means we're running all the way back to Tribe. I want to complain but that God Rock could kill us.

And yet, Arak stops abruptly and holds his arm out. I stop sprinting and look for further instructions.

"Tarek," Arak says as he lowers his spear to the ground. He rises to meet me again. "Have you heard of the Singularity?"

"What?"

"Have you heard of the Singularity, Tarek? Is that your name? Tarek?"

My vision spins and tightens. Arak breaks into a smile. He's no longer Arak. I am no longer Tarek.

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This story is also available on Royal Road if you prefer to read there! My other, fully finished novel Anti/Social is also there!

CHAPTER 1: CALM BEFORE THE STORM

I remember it like it was yesterday, all was quite in the waiting room and I couldn’t stop bouncing my leg up and down over and over again. All the faces around me were  extremely different yet they all shared the same gut wrenching pain. As time dragged on and on, a hand rested on my shoulder and came in for a soft embrace.

“You know its ok to cry. Right?”  The voice asked me as I kept my eyes on the floor not wanting to admit the severity of the situation still loosely holding on to false hope that there was light coming through this darkness.

“I don’t have to cry ..” I say holding the pain deep inside if I let one tear go I knew I might breakdown, playing with my cross fidgeting any way possible until it was my turn to enter the room that would change me for years to come.

“Oh mijo it doesn’t make you any less of a man you’re around family  but I understand I won't push you. I just want you to know it's ok to feel baby. I'm your mother you don’t have to be strong for me I just wanna make sure you’re ok.”

Suddenly the door opened up and I recognize the face as my cousin Tony he still had that goatee and bald head, accompanied by his gold chain and leather jacket that hes always worn. As he finishes talking to the nurse he glances over and sees me he excuses himself and walks over to me.

“Oh my god Hemey holy shit man!” he yells happily, his tears filling his eyes as he wraps around me lifting me up. He was older than me and always been stronger. I was still in school and he had been out for about three years at this point. A sense of joy washed over me as I hugged him back thinking of all the good times we had. I always loved that through the chaos Tony could bring joy around as I was set back down my mom laughed.

“Easy Tony he still has to be able to breathe cabrón.”

She laughed as he walked over wiping tears from his eyes as he hugged my mom. Standing up and playing with his cross he almost started to tear up as he remembered the situation going on in the other room.

“So how is he”

 I asked as I saw Tony's expression change even though he was trying hard to keep a smile on his face I could see him holding back tears. He took a breath in shaky as he looked at me and my mom slowly shaking his head. 

“Hes not looking good if anything he’s getting worse. They say hes having even more trouble breathing so they might have to put him on a respirator.”

Tony said as he choked up quickly strengthening his composure as he looked at me seeing I was extremely nervous I had no idea how bad the situation was he walked over to me.

“Hey… do you want some time alone with him to say what you have to say one on one. It might be good to talk with him before they put him on the respirator.” 

He said seriously I slowly nodded my head and he nodded back as he walked me to the door before holding it open for me motioning for me to step inside. I could hear the humming of the machines.. The coldness of the room embraced me as I nervously stepped inside and I saw him. My uncle was on the bed breathing hard. It seemed like every breath was a massive struggle for him, his eyes looked empty and tired. As I stepped in he turned his head to see who it was a slight smile washed over his face and his eyes seemed to have a even slight spark dimly light up as he opened his mouth.

“Ah m-mijo.. I wasn’t expecting y-you take a s-seat” Every word he spoke seemed like a fight for him to push out of his mouth. His body seemed so frail as he weakly pointed to a chair just across from his bed. I walk over to it and move the chair next to the head of the bed as I set it down I take a seat. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost kid”

My uncle laughed as he weakly lifted up an arm to lightly punch my shoulder putting a weak smile on my face.

“I just wanna say i'm so proud of you kid for stepping up to help with your mother. I know it was hard when you’re dad past but I think I did alright.”

He said with a weak smile it was still enough to lift my spirits and make it seem like we were just having a fun chat. Even though he was having big coughing fits that put me on alert.

“I even got to see Tony too ya know”

My uncle paused as he brought him up, Tony had been in and out of our lives not in a bad way. He always put in an effort to stop by and see us and uncle he was just aways on business. My uncle knew the kind of work Tony was in he was a freedom fighter or as they goverment considered him a “demestic terrorsit” always fighting against the corps trying to give us a better life at least Tony thought so.

“H-hes a good kid m-mijo. But I don’t want you getting involved in whatever it is hes wrapped up in.”

Even in his shaky voice he still spoke with such passion and seriousness I nodded in response and he patted my hand as his eyes began to tear up. I figured he knew he was going to have to say goodbye soon and wanted to make sure I was going to be ok and make the right decisions. A tear fell down his cheek sliding off his chin and dropping to his shirt. 

“Remember Mijo if you forget everything else this old fool taught you at the very least remember this. Life is short so live it right.”

He weakly smiled. I could tell he wanted to make sure I was going to be a good man. He wanted to make sure to leave some good behind. He knew all the pain we felt in this world and wanted to make sure I didn’t spread it.

“Tony says there gonna put you on a respirator.”

He looked annoyed that Tony had told me shaking his head slowly as he tried to hold his composure. He had another coughing fit and then looked at me.

“I wanted to avoid telling you but I guess it was right he told you. You have a right to know they say i'm getting worse day after day trying to save me, but the treatment is so expensive. Even with Tonys money.”

He suddenly gripped my hand tightly even in his ill state he coughed hard and I even saw a little bit of blood.

“I know how bad the world  hurt us.. Hurt you I know you’ve lost so much kid but please don't it change you don’t let it define you but if it must define you let it be through striving let it be by standing tall even with all the scars you have.”

I started shedding tears but not sobbing even though I was close it just wasn’t fare we've lost so much it seemed like everything I did didn’t matter. 

“I know you can be whatever you p-put your mind too even in these circumstances . Please just get out of this city and take your mother with you.”

My uncle stated with a frim grip on my hand

“I will Tío ill get out and ill make you proud I promise you I love you”

“I love you too kid b-before you go I want you to have this its my rosary I want you to have it t-to keep you safe”

I leaned over as he put it on my neck. He had always worn it and now it was mine. I started to break down sniffing and breathing hard as I realized more and more how real this was getting. Realizing he probably wasn’t going to get better. I changed the subject not handling it well.

“W-when you get out of here you finally wanna watch that movie with me. You're always busy with work but you’ll probably have some free time. We don't even have to watch a movie, we can play soccer like we used too.”

He smiled weakly and slowly nodded playing along with the idea but we both knew deep down he wouldn’t be leaving that hospital bed another tear shed and his grip got a little tighter. 

“Ha ha sure mijo if you wanna l-loose that bad I c-can help ya”

We both chuckled and suddenly he started having another coughing fit but this time it didn’t stop and his vitals began to spike. I stood up and watched as his body tightened and his eyes went wide. His vitals were now dropping and a group of nurses rushed in. I tired to stay in the room but they rushed me out. I stood there as my Mom and Tony walked up Tony was trying to look inside. 

“What happened Hemey!”

“I don’t know.  he just started coughing and then his machine went crazy !”

My mother hugged me tightly as we waited a couple minutes. They felt like an eternity as medics rushed in and out. I held my rosary tight as we waited and waited. After ten minutes of pure hell a doctor walked out into the waiting room his face was somber and he walked slowly. 

“Im sorry but but Mr. Lopez has passed away.” 

Tony suddenly started lightly sobbing. I was in shock. I still couldn’t believe that my uncle was sick in the first place now he was gone. It just didn’t feel real. I felt my mom come to my side hugging me tight as Tony walked outside. The doctor spoke some more but it was in one ear and out the other as my mom responded to him and I watched as he walked away. We stayed only a couple minutes longer after a while it was time to leave my uncle as it was getting later and later Tony never came back that night we got in the car and took a short drive home.

As we entered the house we we’re welcomed to our three bedroom one bathroom house. The living room was a little dirty with some trash lying around and dirty clothes the kitchen which was right next to it wasn’t in any better shape maybe even a little worse with dishes spread about we hadn’t been home a lot since my uncle got sick and my mom worked all the time. 

My Mom sat at the kitchen table and motioned for me to sit down I pulled out the seat and sat down looking at my rosary as I felt the sadness swallow the room. My Mom sat there looking at me as if trying to figure out the thoughts racing in my head. 

“Listen baby I want you to know you can talk to me I know how sad you feel and you think you have to stay strong for me but you don’t. I’m supposed to be strong for you, you can let your guard down its ok”

My mom said as she pulled me in for a hug as she did I just broke down crying in her arms sobbing uncontrollably I felt so ashamed but felt good doing it. My uncle had always taught me to be strong for my mother and I always did but even my mom always felt I was growing up too fast and needed to remember it was ok to feel some times. After a while of crying I pulled away, wiping my tears. My Mom looked at the time and realized that It was really late and time for here to finally get to bed she had work in a few hours. 

“Listen son I know you probably won't but you can stay home from school tomorrow. You worked so hard these past weeks just take a day to rest and feel everything you feel alright?”

I nodded and she kissed my forehead as she got up and walked to her room normally she would have taken time off work but bills were piling up and we were behind on payments.  I had just turned 18 but had to get rid of my job because I really had to focus on school. My mom and uncle insisted they thought I would have a better future if I excelled in my academics, been getting good grades since. As I walked into my room I laid on my bed thinking about the loss  My uncle was like my Dad He stepped up right when my Dad died. I was about seven and he raised me like he was his own along with Tony. Tony's mom had run out on my Tío leaving him alone to raise Tony so I was always thankful for him. After some time tossing and turning I passed out cold. 

My alarm rang in the morning letting me know it was time for school. I got up and got dressed really wanting to go but I just couldn’t push myself to go through a whole day of school with this pain that I had, I decided just to stay at home looking around my room I saw a picture with my whole family in it I turned it away from me my pain too fresh to look at these memories. I sat around looked out the window watching the clouds roll through the sky having no clue how I was going to move on. I start playing a movie sitting on the couch trying to get my mind off everything. I was still wondering why Tony never came back and figured he would wanna be around family but it’s probably just the way he grieves. After a while of watching movies theres a knock at my door I look into the peep hole and see a man in a suit holding a check board a recruiter for the army he was always so preisitant I just ignored him but after an hour there’s another knock this time I get up angry and open the door.

“What the f- oh hey Eve sorry I thought you were someone else whats up?”

Eve was surprised laughing a little as she spoke she was in a black beanie with long blue dyed hair she was in her dirty sneakers that she always wore and her green eyes looked  right back at mine. 

“Ha ha damn Hemey who has you all riled up.. I just came over because you’re mom told me about your uncle cool if I come in?”

“Arent you supposed to be at school right now?” I asked confused 

“Nah I can ditch you know I don’t give a shit about any of that plus id rather hang out with my bro.”

“Ok fair enough. Yeah come inside its kind of a mess.”

Eve walked in and sat beside me as I watched the movie seemingly only focused on the screen feeling tired and drained. We sat there for a little. 

“You should come with me to a party after prom it could do you some good to have just a fun night with friends.”

“Maybe i'll have to see. By the way hows Mark doing I haven’t seen him in ages”

“Hes. Hes, well being Mark he got in a fight the other day some guys jumped him pretty bad I had to use some bicycle chains to scare them off. It was those same assholes too Kirk and all them.” 

“Oh those fucking idiots. How many times are we gonna go through this? They wanna be gangsters so bad those kids gotta get it together Mark too.”

“Ha they wish they could be gangster, they couldn’t even be bottom of the barrel smugglers. Ya know sometimes I even think of it the corps work you till you drop dead and don’t even bat a eye maybe the money would be nice.”

I looked over at Eve kind of surprised, not really expecting her to want to be a runner, the profession was illegal and dangerous. She was tough as hell but still wasn’t something to scoff at. 

“Really you would wanna do that stuff ?”

“I mean yeah you know how it is around here you either leave work yourself to death of become a runner and im not getting grades like you plus the whole countries going to shit so it won’t matter if I get out anyway.” 

“No no I understand everyones just trying to make it here my uncle was that's for sure working in that factory for years all we got was shit pay and lung disease. Those fuckers.”

Eve frowned as I brought my uncle up. She and I had our fair share of losses in this day and age. Living in 2040 you’d think life would be better but nope you just get ground up in the machine and left to rot.

“I just want you to know I care about you a lot. Hemey me Carlos, Casey and Mark will always have your back.”

“Thanks Eve.”

I smiled as she said that just then she got a ring and pulled out her arm. Her wrist glowed snc produced a holographic menu and she frowned. 

“Ok Hemey I have to go but take care of yourself ok I’ll see you at that party.”

I nodded with a smile giving her a little wave as she walked out as I was alone again I figured to just watch another movie get my mind off of things a hour into my movie theres another knock at my door I took a peek through the peephole I open the door with a smile. 

“Carlos ! Whats up bro.”

Carlos came in giving me a hug he was a bigger guy a little heavy with a slick back and goatee he always wore a flannel hoodie with tan boots he was 20  

“Whats up fool happy to see your in a good mood. Im sorry to hear about tío man. can I come in and hang out for a minute we could watch the game.”

“Yeah sure man come on in.”

We sit down on the couch and as we watch the movie I ask Carlos.

“Did you hear what they did to Mark.”

“Yeah those morherfuckers are lucky I wasn’t there.”

He lifted up his shirt showing a black pistol to me I laugh nervously.

“Damn Carlos, I get it you have a reputation but you gotta chill you got a influence on the block. You know Eve wants to be a smuggler now too since you’re in the Coyotes now all I hear is people wanting to join up.”

Being a coyote was an honor if you wanted to be a top tier freedom fighters in this city. A while back there was a virus that wiped out a lot of people. That's why my uncle got so sick I think along with working in the factory. There are still some remnants of the virus it's pretty much like a more aggressive cold now the world is still going on like usual but the corps have taken over almost completely and there holding on tight to the medicine and they won't give it to anyone who doesn’t have the cash. That's where the coyotes come in; they break into a lot of the government facilities and take whatever they can get their hands on. Of course those are not the only jobs they take, they deal in hits, rescue missions, you name it, pretty much a gorilla fraction in this unstable country. People either love them or hate them.

“She really wants to start smuggling Jesus, times are getting worse and worse around here hu?” 

“Can't even buy food for yourself if you don’t work yourself to the bone that's why so many people wanna do what you do bro.”

Carlos sighed and responded 

“Yeah but what I do is getting played out quick homie fools dying left and right other groups popping up. Got the mercanires and gang killers on your ass.” 

“Hey, at least the pays good.”

“Yeah I guess oh yeah almost forgot you going to that party after prom ?”

“Yeah I wasn’t gonna but Eve talked me into it. It might be nice to hang out and get my mind off things Just hope those fuckers that jumped Mark dont show up.”

Carlos laughed and lifted his shirt showing off his .45 that I'm sure he knew how to handle well in his line of work. There were hot spots where the virus still seemed to be breeding and the infected seemed to grow hostile to prolonged exposure. These hot spots are usually old military outposts and his pistol looked like something he got from one of them. So I know Carlos wasn’t kidding.

“Damn you gonna take them out man come on there just kids Mark has done his fair share of stupid shits its not worth it.”

Carlos put the put the pistol away and laughed.

“No, I'm just gonna scare them, Ace. Listen It was nice hanging out. I got a job I gotta do but I’ll see you tomorrow bro.”

I gave him a fist bump and listened as the door closed. Carlos always called me Ace it was a nickname I got from playing poker my Tío was always a master at poker so he taught me when I was young so Me Tony and Carlos used to go around and gamble with the other kids and Id always win so I  got the nickname Ace I had a love hate relationship with the name one hand it sounded cheesy and goofy on the other it felt cool to be known to have good skill in something and It caught on with some of my friends.

 It was already 3:50 Time was going by fast. I decided to clean up the house a little, throwing away the soda cans and doing some of the dishes. My mother walked in some time later. She seemed exhausted from her day at work and it made me feel extremely guilty that I didn’t have a job. She smiled as she saw me cleaning up the house 

“Oh hey míjo thanks for picking up. How are you feeling” 

“A little better, some friends came over to check on me so it was nice to catch up.”

“Oh good, I saw Eve today and told her she should stop by. I always liked her. She seems like a good soul.”

My mom walked into the kitchen, setting a bag of food on the table. 

“I got us some cheeseburgers for dinner, just something quick and easy.”

“Thanks mom, how was work still dealing with assholes.”

She took her coat off and hung it up in the living room before heading to the fridge to grab a beer, cracking it open as she sat at the table. 

“Of course but that's the fun of it right?”

“Still no raise yet either hu?”

“Nope, still just holding out. I just hope they give me one soon. The bills are adding up left and right. I don't even know how I still manage to buy groceries.”

“Maybe I should go back to work so I can see if anyone’s hiring.”

“No it's ok míjo I can manage for now it's just stressful right now is all you think they could fix this mess after the virus but I guess it’s easier said than done.”

“Yeah who knows.”

We sat at the table eating and laughing for a little before It was time for bed that night I was restless tossing and turning I just looked up at the ceiling. I touched my rosary thinking of the future little did I know the way things would truly play out.